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Find studies

Showing 1–25 of 186 studies in Brain scans and imaging · tagged Early Stage (page 1 of 8) · 27,380 in the whole library · How the 0–100 score works

Browse by subject, author or institution

Each number is how many studies that link shows, with your other filters kept.

What “Brain scans and imaging” covers

Brain scans and imaging — MRI, PET and other scans: what they show, how early, and how reliably.

A note on reading research. One study is rarely the final word.

We try to note the size of a study, whether it was in humans or animals, and how early-stage the finding is. If a summary here doesn't make that clear, treat it with extra caution and check the original source.

Trial of Solanezumab in Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 79 out of 100. The New England journal of medicine 2023-07-17

Solanezumab, which targets monomeric amyloid in persons with elevated brain amyloid levels, did not slow cognitive decline as compared with placebo over a period of 240 weeks in persons with preclinical Alzheimer's disease. 3 key findings →

Design: clinical trial Participants: 1,169 Evidence: low

Meta-analysis of amyloid-cognition relations in cognitively normal older adults

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 78 out of 100. Neurology 2013-04-01

Based on this meta-analytic survey of the literature, increased amyloid burden has small but nontrivial associations with specific domains of cognitive performance in individuals who are currently cognitively normal. 3 key findings →

Design: meta-analysis Participants: 7,140 Evidence: high

Thinning of retinal layers, measured using optical coherence tomography (OCT), is associated with some neurodegenerative disorders such as established Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis. 5 key findings →

Design: systematic review Participants: 622 Evidence: high

We found that distinct sphingolipid species including sphingomyelin (SM) with acyl residue sums C16:0, C18:1, and C16:1 (SM C16:0, SM C18:1, SM C16:1) and hydroxysphingomyelin with acyl residue sum C14:1 (SM (OH) C14:1) were consistently associated with severity of AD pathology at autopsy and AD progression across prodromal and preclinical stages. 5 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 44 Evidence: moderate

Association Between Elevated Brain Amyloid and Subsequent Cognitive Decline Among Cognitively Normal Persons

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 73 out of 100. JAMA 2017-06-01

Among the 445 participants (243 with normal amyloid, 202 with elevated amyloid), mean (SD) age was 74.0 (5.9) years, mean education was 16.4 (2.7) years, and 52% were women. 2 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 243 Evidence: moderate

(18)F-Flutemetamol performs similarly to the (11)C-PIB parent molecule within the same subjects and provides high test-retest replicability and potentially much wider accessibility for clinical and research use. 3 key findings →

Evidence: low

Addition of CAT to the PACC provides unique information about early cognitive decline not currently captured by the episodic memory, executive function, and global cognition components and may therefore improve detection of early Aβ-related cognitive decline. 1 key finding →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 70 Evidence: moderate

There were 571 participants in the normal cognition group, 625 participants in the subjective cognitive decline group, 155 participants in the objectively defined subtle cognitive decline group, 501 participants in the mild cognitive impairment group, 471 participants in Alzheimer's disease group, and 128 participants with cognitive impairment from other known causes. 5 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 4,386 Evidence: moderate

In the discovery cohort, the mean (SD) age was 70.9 (8.5) years, 191 (58%) were male, the mean (SD) MMSE score was 27.1 (1.9), and 110 individuals with MCI (33%) converted to dementia (71 to AD dementia). 4 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 110 Evidence: moderate

Amyloid chronicity provides unique information about cognitive decline and neurofibrillary tangle development and may be useful to investigate preclinical Alzheimer's disease. 2 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 257 Evidence: moderate

Twelve articles-published between the 2007 and 2017-have been included in this systematic review after a quantitative and qualitative selection. 4 key findings →

Design: systematic review Evidence: high

In this study, lower AD signature region volumes, brain microhemorrhages, higher WMH volumes, and infarcts were risk factors associated with dementia in older community-based residents. 4 key findings →

Design: cohort study Participants: 1,553 Evidence: moderate

This study analyzed 871 eyes from 439 participants (230 APOE ε4 noncarriers and 209 carriers). 5 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 58 Evidence: moderate

The very mildest symptomatic stage of AD exhibits the same CSF biomarker phenotype as more advanced AD. 1 key finding →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 139 Evidence: moderate

Associations between tau, Aβ, and cortical thickness with cognition in Alzheimer disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100. Neurology 2019-01-09

Our findings suggest that tau PET is more sensitive than Aβ PET and measures of cortical thickness for detecting early cognitive changes in preclinical AD. 2 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 106 Evidence: low

The cortical signature of prodromal AD: regional thinning predicts mild AD dementia

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 67 out of 100. Neurology 2008-12-24

Thinning in specific cortical areas known to be affected by Alzheimer disease (AD) is detectable in individuals with questionable AD dementia (QAD) and predicts conversion to mild AD dementia. 3 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 49 Evidence: moderate

Functional network integrity presages cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 66 out of 100. Neurology 2017-06-07

In clinically normal older adults, lower functional connectivity predicted more rapid decline in PACC scores over time, particularly when coupled with increased Aβ burden. 2 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 237 Evidence: moderate

In the Asan cohort, after adjusting for age and sex, p-tau181 (AUC = 0.854) or APOE ε4 status (AUC = 0.769) distinguished Aβ status with high accuracy. 5 key findings →

Design: cohort study Evidence: moderate

Default mode network connectivity in stable vs progressive mild cognitive impairment

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 65 out of 100. Neurology 2011-01-12

GOF indices were highest in normal controls, intermediate in MCI, and lowest in AD (p Conclusions fMRI connectivity indices distinguish patients with MCI who undergo cognitive decline and conversion to AD from those who remain stable over a 2- to 3-year follow-up period. 3 key findings →

Design: cross-sectional Participants: 68 Evidence: moderate

White matter hyperintensities and CSF Alzheimer disease biomarkers in preclinical Alzheimer disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 65 out of 100. Neurology 2019-12-30

These results suggest that WMH primarily affect the risk of progression when CSF measures of neurodegeneration or neuronal injury (as reflected by t-tau) are low. 5 key findings →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 274 Evidence: moderate

Baseline predictors of rates of hippocampal atrophy in mild cognitive impairment

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 65 out of 100. Neurology 2007-10-01

Rates of hippocampal atrophy (%/year) were 0.0 +/- 0.8 in the absent, 1.7 +/- 0.4 in the moderate, and 3.6 +/- 1.0 in the severe (mean +/- SD) tertile. 2 key findings →

Participants: 323 Evidence: moderate

Hippocampal and entorhinal atrophy in mild cognitive impairment: prediction of Alzheimer disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 64 out of 100. Neurology 2007-03-01

Hippocampal and entorhinal cortex volumes were each largest in controls, intermediate in MCI nonconverters, and smallest in MCI converters to AD (37 of 139 patients converted to AD). 1 key finding →

Participants: 139 Evidence: low

Imaging and cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers in early preclinical alzheimer disease

✓ Peer-reviewed alzhub usefulness score 64 out of 100. Annals of neurology 2016-07-25

CSF Aβ42 levels are tightly coupled with cortical amyloid load in the earliest stages of preclinical AD, and begin to decrease dramatically prior to the point when an abnormal threshold of cortical accumulation is detected with amyloid imaging. 1 key finding →

Design: longitudinal study Participants: 164 Evidence: moderate

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Where “Free full text” comes from

Free full text links and the Full text may need a subscription label come from Unpaywall, Europe PMC and OpenAlex records of free copies, checked 10 Oct 2026. A study with neither is unknown, not paywalled. Show only studies that are free to read

How the 0–100 score works — and why some entries are capped

This is alzhub's own score. It is not an official metric, not an impact factor, and no journal, publisher or ranking body endorses it. We built it so that a reader who is not a scientist can tell a landmark trial from a conference abstract without having to already know the difference. Every point comes from one of 20 components, all of them printed on the study itself, so you can disagree with our arithmetic rather than having to trust the total.

  • Journal tier up to 10 pts
  • Journal's citation record up to 4 pts
  • Study design up to 12 pts
  • Strength of evidence up to 5 pts
  • Peer-review validation up to 10 pts
  • How recent up to 5 pts
  • Sample size up to 4 pts
  • Effect reported up to 3 pts
  • Studied in people up to 3 pts
  • Randomised / blinded up to 2 pts
  • Times cited up to 7 pts
  • Citations per year up to 5 pts
  • Impact for its field and year up to 6 pts
  • Cited by studies here up to 6 pts
  • Still being cited up to 4 pts
  • Senior author's track record up to 4 pts
  • Institution's track record up to 3 pts
  • Multi-centre collaboration up to 3 pts
  • Indexed in PubMed up to 2 pts
  • Free to read up to 2 pts

Journals are placed in ordered tiers, never given a numeric impact factor — we could not verify current impact factors from a source we control, and an invented one would be worse than none. Tier 1 is the top-tier general journals (NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA, Nature, Science, Nature Medicine); tier 2 is the leading specialty journals; tier 3 is every other peer-reviewed journal. A separate part scores how much the journal's own papers are cited, which tells the tier-3 journals apart.

Two rules we don't bend. First, we never fill in a missing value: if a record does not state a sample size or a design, that component scores zero, and if we simply have no data for a part, such as a citation count, that part is left out and the study is scored on the parts we could check. The study card says which. Second, anything that is not a peer-reviewed article is capped at 16/100 and carries a warning chip — so a conference abstract or a company press release can never outrank a peer-reviewed paper, no matter how good it looks.

We rank a rigorous null result — a good trial showing that something does not work — above an early positive finding. Someone deciding whether to buy a supplement is served by that, and the rigour is already counted by the design and journal components.

The score is computed from the published data alone and is reproducible: the same file always yields the same numbers.

See the whole rubric drawn out → — four charts covering all 27,380 studies: how the scores are spread and where the cap bites, which of the 20 components the library is strong and weak on, which subjects rest on stronger evidence, and what kinds of study each subject is actually built from.

What this library is — and isn't

This is a large sample of the Alzheimer's literature, not an exhaustive index of it. It holds 27,380 records, built mostly from automated pulls of Europe PMC (60.6% of the library) and OpenAlex (18.6%), plus smaller pulls from PubMed, Crossref and medRxiv. If a study, a drug, or a finding isn't here, that is not evidence it doesn't exist in the literature — it may simply not have been pulled in yet.

1,032 records (3.8% of the library) are not peer-reviewed — 962 of those are preprints posted before any journal review, and the rest are conference abstracts, regulatory notices and reports. Every study card on this page states its status plainly, and the score above is capped for anything that isn't a peer-reviewed article.

See the full, machine-readable breakdown of this library's coverage →

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