Research Projects – Sajjadi Lab

Hippocampal sclerosis of aging (HS) is a type of dementia that is common amongst the oldest-old. Despite its importance, relatively little is known about the disease and there are no biomarkers. HS is a mimic of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) due to its similar symptomatic profiles. We have multiple projects looking at HS including our RO1 grant, where we will adopt multi-faceted approach to enable diagnose of this condition during life and to identify its risk factors. Related projects include identification of new neuropsychological tests that specifically rely on the neural substrate of hippocampal sclerosis i.e. CA1 region of hippocampus, and post mortem MRI project.

The oldest-old is one of the fastest growing segments in the US population and a significant portion of dementia sufferers belong to this age group. Imaging studies in the oldest old have been limited due to exclusion of the oldest old from many studies. In collaboration with The 90+ Study, we analyze imaging data acquired from the oldest old to better understand the neural substrate of cognitive impairment in this population.

Research has shown that changes in language function and brain structure can be early indicators of cognitive impairment. However, traditional methods of spontaneous speech analysis can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Thus, we are developing multi-modal models that enhance prediction and detection of dementia using speech and imaging markers extracted via novel transformer-based approaches.

We are acquiring high resolution postmortem MRI in donated brains and developing novel processing techniques for examining associations between imaging and pathology using these high-resolution images, with a focus on the pathologies of hippocampal sclerosis of aging and subtle vascular lesions which are difficult to identify in vivo.