The Aging Brain and Cognition: Contribution of Vascular Injury, Amyloid Plaque and Tau Protein to Cognitive Dysfunction After Stroke

Stroke can lead to signficiant neurological deficits, and about one-third of stroke patients will be diagnosed of vascular mild cognitive impairment or post-stroke dementia. Post-stroke dementia includes all types of dementia that happen after stroke, irrespective of their cause, and vascular dementia (VaD), degenerative dementia (especially Alzheimer's disease), or mixed dementia (dementia as a result of the coexistence of vascular lesions of the brain and neurodegenerative lesions) are the most common causes of post-stroke dementia. However, it is difficult to determine to what extent cognitive impairment may be attributable to stroke versus concomitant Alzheimer disease. With the advent of PET imaging technique, we are able to conduct a multi-modal neuroimaging study to explore the composite influence of vascular injury, amyloid plaque and Tau protein the the cognitive performance after stroke.