Page 113 - Libro Memoria Cien Inglés

University of Eastern Finland in Kuo- imaging analysis to investigate diffe-
pio, Finland, as part of her Queen Sofia
Foundation-MAPFRE scholarship. Dr.
Tohka is specialized in machine lear-
ning and assisted in the validation of
the predictive algorithm, both through
validation in an internal sample (sub-
jects of the Vallecas Project with mild
cognitive impairment-MCI beyond
visit 2), as well as in an external sam-
ple (subjects with DCL from the ADNI
cohort).
Dr. Zhang has also focused on investi-
gating the effects that the ԑ4 allele of
the APOE gene has on the hippocam-
pal volume of cognitively healthy el-
derly from the Vallecas Project, as this
is a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's
disease. These effects were investiga-
ted both transversally and longitudi-
nally from visit 1 to visit 5. In addition,
she identified subjects carrying the ԑ4
allele who experienced MCI during the
Vallecas Project follow-up and perfor-
med a longitudinal analysis between
these subjects and a control group
with an allelic combination ԑ3/ԑ3 of the
APOE gene and who had also develo-
ped MCI.
Overall, she has completed more than
4,000 hippocampal segmentations in
788 cross-sectional individuals and 430
longitudinal individuals. Her results
were presented as a virtual poster at
the Alzheimer's Association Internatio-
nal Conference (AAIC) 2020.
Dr. Zhang also performed diffusion
rences in white matter microstructure
between controls and MCI converters
at 1 and 4 years prior to conversion. She
continues to study these changes lon-
gitudinally, and the abstract detailing
her results has been accepted for AAIC
2021.
Lastly, Dr. Zhang has been working
with the radiology team to complete
quality control of all Vallecas neuroi-
maging data to date, to ensure a clean
database with no duplicates or bad
scans. Additionally, she has pre-proces-
sed the T1 images of subjects and visits
in preparation for future VBM studies.
In 2020, Marta Garo Pascual collabora-
ted with the study of diffusion tensor
images in the population of supe-
ragers and controls identified in the
Vallecas Project cohort. Superagers
respond to people over 80 with an epi-
sodic memory at least as good as that
of a healthy person between the ages
of 50 and 60.
The study of the diffusion tensor ima-
ges was performed using the TBSS
(Tract-Based Spatial Statistics) proto-
col. And both a cross-sectional and
longitudinal study of these parameters
that account for the microstructure of
the cerebral white matter was carried
out.
On the other hand, a collaboration was
established with Dr. Jussi Tohka from
the University of Eastern Finland and