Imaging of a living brain can help clearly differentiate between two types of dementia

Imaging of a living brain can help clearly differentiate between two types of dementia
SPECT images, superimposed on a magnetic resonance atlas, of an axial slice (top row) and a sagittal slice (bottom row) of the human brain, with a quantitative artificial-color scale showing the differences in the average distribution of the radioactive compound [123I]FP-CIT in the striatum of healthy controls, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, and Parkinson’s disease (from left to right). Credit: Francisco Oliveira (CCU)

American actor Robin Williams had a neurodegenerative brain disease called dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB)—a distressing disease with symptoms in common with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). But unlike these two conditions, DLB also entails prominent mood and cognitive swings, sleep disorders, and vivid, sometimes terrifying, visual…

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