About this Research Topic
Scientific research in the last few decades has witnessed enormous growth in our understanding of the physiology, genetics, and circuitry of brain development and function; still, it hasn’t been accompanied by a comparable increase in the efficacy of treatment for neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental, diseases. This imposes a challenging task for the scientific community worldwide.
Neurodegenerative diseases are often ageing-associated debilitating conditions that involve progressive neuronal death in specific regions of the brain. The symptoms may range from gradual progression from mild cognitive impairment to full-blown dementia as in case of Alzheimer’s disease or ataxias such as bradykinesia and postural instability in case of Parkinson’s disease. Neurodevelopmental diseases (such as Autism Spectrum Disorders, Epilepsy) are deviations from
tightly regulated, genetically encoded brain development lead to serious Intellectual, cognitive and language impairments in neurodevelopmental process.
The current state-of-the-art healthcare facilities have improved the quality of prognosis and therapeutic interventions for these diseases. However, their extensive prevalence in diverse ethnic and demographic groups poses a great economic burden on the society. Etiology of these diseases is poorly understood with exceptions to a few genetic and environmental factors and no known cure exists.
Molecular epidemiological tools have played a major role in elucidating the high-risk factor genes in familial forms and susceptible factors in non-familial forms. The advancements in multi-modal imaging techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), functional Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (fMRS), Magnetic Encephalography (MEG), Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) etc. provide very strong non-invasive tools for reliably predicting the individuals who will progress from asymptomatic pre-clinical phase to stages of cognitive, intellectual and language impairment. It is, therefore, paramount to identify novel imagable biomarkers involving antioxidants, neurotransmitters and physiological parameters that can aid in identifying the causal processes of these brain disorders and can be translated into clinical practices for simplified diagnostic tests and advocating appropriate lifestyle changes to delay the onset of symptoms.
In this Research Topic, we invite versatile systematic reviews, hypothesis and original research contributions that can help in translating clinical research from “Bench to Bedside”.
The contributions may focus on, but may not be restricted to the following areas:
1. Clinical studies and trials using one or more imaging techniques such as MRI, MRS, fMRI, fMRS, MEG, DTI etc. that may be reconciling with physical and neuropsychological tests for extremely sensitive measurement of metabolic and physiological biomarkers.
2. Novel tool-box designs for processing of multi-modality imaging data; schemes for predictive and early diagnostic interpretation from biomarker imaging. Smart toolboxes that can aid in determining the accurate focal points for epileptic surgery.
3. Brain templates for individual diseases in different ethnic and demographic groups that can be used in baseline assessment and classification of the subtype of the neurodevelopmental or neurodegenerative diseases on the basis of imagable biomarkers.
4. Contributions focusing on 3 Vs of Big Data- Volume, Velocity, and Variety- with respect to the above-mentioned parameters are also encouraged.
Keywords: Neurodegenerative diseases, Neurodevelopmental diseases, Multi-modal Imaging, Biomarkers
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
