[en] This book contains four sections, each consisting of several papers. The section titles are: Special Lecture; State of the Art; PET and SPECT Studies; and NMR Spectroscopy and Imaging

[en] A great deal is known about the composition of the nervous system and the metabolic reactions it is capable of carrying out. Metabolism is active, and it is altered not only by outside influences but also by functional demands. The authors now have the opportunity to refine the methodology for studying these reactions in the living brain, including in humans in health and disease. This represents one of the most important possibilities for advancing the authors' knowledge of the nervous system and of behavior

[en] In this paper the authors utilized FNMR to get information on the level of the superoxide dismutases in the rat brain in view of possible applications of this technique in physiopathological studies. In particular superoxide dismutases, providing the basic defence against the toxicity of superoxide ion, may contribute to the control of aging processes occurring via free radical mechanism, which have been associated with membrane lipid peroxidation and with accumulation of pigments in brain

No abstract available

[en] Thirty-six patients affected by Parkinson's disease were studied using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and [/sup 99m/Tc]-HM-PAO as a tracer. The scanning procedure was performed 16-24 h after discontinuation of specific therapy. Tracer activity ratios were determined in 10 pairs of cerebellar, cortical, and subcortical regions. Data were compared with those of 10 age-matched controls. Most of the regions examined did not show any relevant change between parkinsonian and control subjects. Notably, mean activity in striatal regions were similar in the two groups. Increased activity in caudate-putamen was found in patients who were on chronic DOPA therapy. Side-to-side asymmetries in the basal ganglia increased with the severity of the disease. Significant reductions of tracer uptake, from control values, were observed bilaterally in the parietal cortex. These deficits were more pronounced in patients with mental deterioration and in subjects who had been chronically treated with anticholinergic drugs. Parietal perfusion deficits in parkinsonian patients resemble those described in Alzheimer's dementia. These findings suggest that the heterogeneous alterations of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in parkinsonian patients reflect the multifactorial pathophysiology of the disease

[en] Dementia of frontal type (DFT) is a fairly common degenerative disease distinct from Alzheimer's disease (AD), whose reportedly distinctive instrumental feature is frontal lobe hypoperfusion on SPECT. We evaluated the cortical dopaminergic system in 6AD, 5 DFT, and 6 control subjects with SPECT and both [⁹⁹Tc]-HM-PAO, a perfusion tracer, and [¹²³I]-IBZM, a D2 postsynaptic ligand. Both in AD and DFT patients, [⁹⁹Tc]-HM-PAO SPECT showed a relative frontal hypoperfusion. On the contrary, [¹²³I]-IBZM SPECT showed significantly reduced ligand uptake in superior frontal regions of DFT (0.89 ± 0.08 relative to control subjects) as compared to AD patients (0.97 ± 0.02; difference of means: 0.08, 95% confidence Interval 0.004 to 0.156; p = 0.041). Results suggest more marked involvement of the frontal cortical dopaminergic system in DFT than in AD patients. (au) (24 refs.)