Jonathan McConathy
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience
Alzheimer's disease (AD) changes the brain years before symptoms appear. Brain imaging can show these changes as biomarkers, measurable signs of disease.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
neuroimaging
positron emission tomography
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2029
What they work on
- Acquire amyloid-PET and tau-PET scans, which detect hallmark Alzheimer's protein deposits, and MRI scans from UAB Alzheimer's Disease Research Center participants using a simultaneous PET/MRI system.
- Measure regional brain volumes for ATN (amyloid, tau, neurodegeneration) classification and MRI signs of vascular brain disease, using a validated semi-automated processing workflow.
- Build a robust neuroimaging biomarker dataset from Black or African American individuals, linked to clinical assessments and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers, to study racial disparities in Alzheimer's disease.
- Share anonymized imaging data and analysis summaries with researchers through a secure cloud platform, and support studies that use experimental PET tracers and MRI techniques.
More about the research
Yet Black or African American people, who are affected by Alzheimer's, are underrepresented in the imaging studies used to define these biomarkers. This Imaging Core, part of the UAB Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC), collects, analyzes and shares brain imaging from the center's study participants. It aims to fill that gap and to help researchers study racial disparities in Alzheimer's and related cognitive disorders.
Why it matters
Robust brain imaging data from Black or African American adults could help researchers understand how racial disparities affect Alzheimer's disease and related cognitive disorders. It could also check whether imaging biomarkers used for diagnosis and research work equally well in this underrepresented population.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David Geldmacher
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience
Enroll and follow about 525 community volunteers each year, cognitively unimpaired, with mild cognitive impairment or with mild dementia, at least 40% Black or African American, using standard national tests plus social determinants of health, body composition and actigraphy measures.
Tracy A. Butler
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Neuroscience
Confirm, using additional complementary measurement methods, the preliminary finding that traumatic brain injury reduces brain cerebrospinal and interstitial fluid clearance, including the glymphatic pathway, in patients imaged within 14 days of injury.
Arvind Caprihan
University of New Mexico, NM·Neuroscience
Provide advanced MRI to Alzheimer's center studies, including blood-brain barrier permeability, quantitative T1 and T2 mapping, and cerebrovascular reactivity, alongside the standard SCAN dementia imaging protocol.
The school
University of Alabama at Birmingham: 45 labs on PI Pages, $866M a year on research, 166 research doctorates a year.
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