News and participation
February 2025 - New publication: No effect of apolipoprotein E polymorphism on MRI brain activity during movie watc
By: Juliet OBrien
Last updated: Thursday, 6 March 2025
Apolipoprotein E e4 (APOE4) is a significant genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. However, it is not known whether there are differences in the brains of healthy adults who carrying the APOE4 gene. Our lab and others have shown that the brain regions that are active when we watch movies overlap with regions that are damaged by Alzheimer’s disease. In this study we used MRI brain imaging data collected from 425 people while they watched a short Alfred Hitchcock movie. Importantly, we showed that there were no differences between adults with or without the APOE4 gene. This suggests that the APOE4 gene does not directly affect these parts of the brain, and changes are only seen if adults start to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The work was led by Petar Raykov – a former postdoc form the lab who now works at Cambridge University. Chris and Jess were also co-authors. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1177/23982128251314577
Participation
If you would like to find out about participating in an MRI experiment or just a straightforward memory or attention task then contact Chris Bird (chris.bird@sussex.ac.uk).
We also hold ad hoc journal clubs and research meetings – for details contact Chris.