Primary Olfactory Cortex Involvement in Alzheimers Disease: A Functional and Morphological MRI Investigation

Megha Vasavada¹, Jian-Li Wang¹, Xiaoyu Sun¹, Sarah Ryan¹, Christopher Weitekamp¹, Prasanna Karunanayaka¹, Qing Yang¹

Olfactory deficits are known to occur in patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and early AD. In this work, we performed concurrent measurements of the volumes and olfactory activations of the primary olfactory cortex (POC) and hippocampus, and demonstrated that the POC is clearly involved in early AD functionally and pathologically.