Abstract #0728

Bigler D, Scott K, Meadowcroft M, Stephens H, Simmons Z, Smith M, Yang Q, Wang J

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is one of the most common neuromuscular diseases worldwide with no known cure and is invariably fatal. Presently the progression of the disease within the brain is not well understood. In this study, novel gray matter thickness maps of age and sex matched controls and ALS subjects are visually inspected to determine if thinning in the primary motor cortex may be used for diagnosis and monitoring of disease progression in ALS. Results suggest that this technique may be useful for this purpose.