The boundary between motor and cognitive neurodegenerative disorders has become increasingly blurred in recent years as a significant proportion of patients present with complex disease features. In particular, frontotemporal dementia and motor neuron disease are increasingly viewed along a shared clinical continuum with overlapping clinical features, present at initial presentation or with disease progression. This clinical overlap is widely reflected across multi-modal neuroimaging signatures of disease, in particular affecting subcortical neural structures (e.g. thalamus, cingulate, hippocampus, cerebellum) and their connecting pathways. Traditionally, fine-grained patterns of subcortical pathology have been overlooked or poorly reported due to methodological constraints associated with widely accessible analysis approaches. The cytoarchitecture of subcortical brain structures, however, holds incredible complexity with distinct cortical projections reflective of the brain’s modular organization facilitating adaptive compensatory mechanisms in response to neurodegeneration.
Over the past decade, there has been a myriad of advancements in in-vivo characterization of regional and subnuclei changes within subcortical brain structures and their respective neural connections. Increasingly, the importance of subcortical pathology is being recognized in the early and even asymptomatic stage of neurodegenerative disorders, with overlapping patterns of involvement identified with increasing disease progression. The focus of this Research Topic is to highlight current advances in the understanding of subcortical pathology across the spectrum of cognitive and motor neurodegenerative syndromes including, but not limited to:
(i) Early clinical diagnosis and phenotyping
(ii) Disease marker of motor and cognitive/behavioral impairment
(iii) Common and unique disease signatures across neurodegenerative disorders
(iv) Mechanisms for pathogenesis and propagation
(v) Novel applied methodologies for quantification
(vi) Directions for future development
We welcome submissions of Perspectives, Original Research, Systematic Reviews, Brief Research Reports, and Case Series.
The boundary between motor and cognitive neurodegenerative disorders has become increasingly blurred in recent years as a significant proportion of patients present with complex disease features. In particular, frontotemporal dementia and motor neuron disease are increasingly viewed along a shared clinical continuum with overlapping clinical features, present at initial presentation or with disease progression. This clinical overlap is widely reflected across multi-modal neuroimaging signatures of disease, in particular affecting subcortical neural structures (e.g. thalamus, cingulate, hippocampus, cerebellum) and their connecting pathways. Traditionally, fine-grained patterns of subcortical pathology have been overlooked or poorly reported due to methodological constraints associated with widely accessible analysis approaches. The cytoarchitecture of subcortical brain structures, however, holds incredible complexity with distinct cortical projections reflective of the brain’s modular organization facilitating adaptive compensatory mechanisms in response to neurodegeneration.
Over the past decade, there has been a myriad of advancements in in-vivo characterization of regional and subnuclei changes within subcortical brain structures and their respective neural connections. Increasingly, the importance of subcortical pathology is being recognized in the early and even asymptomatic stage of neurodegenerative disorders, with overlapping patterns of involvement identified with increasing disease progression. The focus of this Research Topic is to highlight current advances in the understanding of subcortical pathology across the spectrum of cognitive and motor neurodegenerative syndromes including, but not limited to:
(i) Early clinical diagnosis and phenotyping
(ii) Disease marker of motor and cognitive/behavioral impairment
(iii) Common and unique disease signatures across neurodegenerative disorders
(iv) Mechanisms for pathogenesis and propagation
(v) Novel applied methodologies for quantification
(vi) Directions for future development
We welcome submissions of Perspectives, Original Research, Systematic Reviews, Brief Research Reports, and Case Series.
