EAN 2022 | The human functional connectome in Alzheimer’s disease

Massimo Filippi, MD, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy, discusses the applications of functional connectivity analyses in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. This approach allows for tracking how the disease spreads in the brain throughout the disease course. For instance, in Alzheimer’s disease, it is possible to follow how the pathological changes propagate from the hippocampus, a known site of initial damage, to more frontal or posterior regions. The observations of those changes provide important insights into the pathophysiology of the disease, in particular how pathological proteins act. Analyses of the human functional connectome can also be a valuable tool for evaluating the prognosis of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. This interview took place at the 2022 Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) in Vienna, Austria.