Metabolic covariance networks of Alzheimer’s disease animal models showed a lower community structure agreement compared to normal models. Agreement quantifies the propensity of regions in the metabolic network to cluster together, with lower values indicative of disruptions in inter-regional relationships of metabolic activity.

The other research is from Mattia Veronese, PhD, a scientist from King’s College in London and associate professor at the University of Padua in Italy, who studied human PET imaging data of participants of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) to look for brain network changes and disease progression using the network neuroscience approach developed by Sporns. Veronese is also a co-author on the Alzheimer’s & Dementia journal article.


“Those two pieces of work led our team to develop tools that would extract additional meaning from images of MODEL-AD mouse models, with the goal of not only providing similar whole brain metrics observed in the previous clinical studies, but to also dive deeper and possibly understand how subnetworks within the brain of these models might shed light on the mechanisms of the underlying biology,” Territo said.

Chumin helped develop the tools and resources from the network neuroscience approach of human clinical research to preclinical animal models of MODEL-AD. The investigators analyzed the brain as a whole and also looked at subnetworks within the brain to see how those areas communicate and interact as the disease progresses.

“Using this approach, the research team’s analysis of metabolism changes in animal models confirmed previous clinical findings of disease progression in patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” Territo said.

The animal models showed age-related changes in glucose uptake as well as differences between males and females—similar to findings from Alzheimer’s disease human data.

Territo said MODEL-AD plans to use these network neuroscience tools in their investigations of other preclinical data, including models of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, potential therapeutics for the disease and multi-modal analyses that combine neuroimaging data from PET and MRI.


About IU School of Medicine
IU School of Medicine is the largest medical school in the U.S. and is annually ranked among the top medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. The school offers high-quality medical education, access to leading medical research and rich campus life in nine Indiana cities, including rural and urban locations consistently recognized for livability.

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