From previous studies in healthy volunteers the prefrontal regions are deeply involved in prospective memory (PM), although little is known about the functional neural basis of PM in prodromal Alzheimer's disease (AD). To this end, we retrospectively recruited 18 patients with mild cognitive impairment caused by AD and 23 matched healthy control subjects who had undergone 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography and the PM-specific paradigm test. Brain metabolism was correlated with the PM score in the 2 groups separately to find those brain areas correlated with PM performance, which were then used as a hub for an inter-regional metabolic connectivity analyses (inter-regional correlation analysis). Of note, in mild cognitive impairment caused by AD, but not in healthy control subjects, PM score positively correlated with metabolic levels in the right anterior prefrontal cortex (middle and inferior frontal gyri), which disclosed a loss of interhemispheric connectivity in the inter-regional correlation analysis. According to our findings, the functioning of the right anterior prefrontal cortex and its interhemispheric metabolic connectivity is crucial in early AD to sustain PM performance, which deteriorates along with progressive metabolic failure of the interconnected areas.

中文翻译：

---

前额叶皮质在前瞻性记忆中的作用：早期阿尔茨海默病的探索性 FDG-PET 研究

从以前对健康志愿者的研究来看，前额叶区域与前瞻记忆 (PM) 密切相关，尽管对前驱阿尔茨海默病 (AD) 中 PM 的功能神经基础知之甚少。为此，我们回顾性招募了 18 名 AD 引起的轻度认知障碍患者和 23 名经过 18F-氟脱氧葡萄糖正电子发射断层扫描和 PM 特异性范式测试的匹配健康对照受试者。分别将脑代谢与 2 组的 PM 评分相关联，以找到与 PM 表现相关的大脑区域，然后将其用作区域间代谢连接分析（区域间相关性分析）的中心。值得注意的是，在 AD 引起的轻度认知障碍中，但在健康对照受试者中则不然，PM 评分与右前前额叶皮层（额中回和额下回）的代谢水平呈正相关，这在区域间相关性分析中揭示了半球间连通性的丧失。根据我们的研究结果，右前前额叶皮层的功能及其半球间代谢连接在 AD 早期对于维持 PM 性能至关重要，PM 性能随着互连区域的渐进性代谢衰竭而恶化。