Title: Caudate Atrophy & Clinical Correlates in 400 Alzheimer’s Disease, MCI, & Healthy Elderly Subjects Authors:

Introduction: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects 35 million people worldwide (Dartigues, 2009). AD research using MRI has focused on early changes in medial temporal and cortical gray matter. Although caudate atrophy is more typical of motor disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (Nakamura et al. 2001), beta-amyloid and tau pathology accumulates in the caudate in AD (Braak and Braak, 1990). Here we mapped 3D patterns of caudate atrophy in a large cohort of AD, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and matched elderly control subjects. We tested whether caudate atrophy is associated with: (1) clinical scores (MMSE, CDR) and their decline over a 1-year follow-up period; (2) conversion from MCI to AD; (3) immediate and delayed Logical Memory scores from the Wechsler Memory Scale; (4) CSF A, taup-tau levels; and (5) age, sex, ApoE genotype, and body mass index. We used cumulative distribution functions and false discovery rate theory (FDR) to rank the relative strengths of these associations.