Wei Li1, Christian Langkammer2, Reinhold Schmidt2, Stefan Ropele2, Chunlei Liu1, 3
1Brain Imaging & Analysis Center, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States; 2Neurology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria; 3Radiology, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States
Magnetic susceptibility shows good gray and white matter contrast, and may provide valuable information regarding iron deposits and myelination in brain tissue. In this study, we correlated susceptibility contrast in sensory and motor cortex with clinical cognitive scores in 115 healthy volunteers ranging from 40-83 y/o. It is found that decreased susceptibility contrast in sensory cortex was associated with reduced cognitive performance as demonstrated by the increased errors in Wisconsin card sorting test. These results may suggest the potential value of magnetic susceptibility contrast for assessment of the healthiness of cerebral cortex in the human brain.