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J. Riley McCarten, MD
 J. Riley McCarten, MD
Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology
Director, Memory Clinic, N. Bud Grossman Center for Memory Research and Care
mccar034@umn.edu
Education
Board Certification: American Academy of Neurology
MD, University of Minnesota
Residency (Neurology), University of Minnesota
Fellowships: Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorder Center (Sleep Medicine), HCMC,
Minneapolis, MN (Sleep Medicine); Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (Alzheimer’s Disease), Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston,
MA
Research
My research interests include the early identification of Alzheimer’s
disease. In collaboration with researchers at the Brain Science Center
at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, subjects with early Alzheimer’s,
including those with Mild Cognitive Impairment, a condition that increases
the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, are studied using magnetoencephalography
(MEG). MEG is a highly sensitive technique that measures the magnetic
fields generated by electrical activity in the brain. We have published
data that demonstrate MEG’s ability to discriminate Alzheimer’s
from normal older adults and those with other brain disorders, including multiple
sclerosis, schizophrenia and chronic alcoholism. Preliminary data also
indicate MEG’s ability to discriminate Alzheimer’s disease from
Mild Cognitive Impairment, and both Alzhemer’s and Mild Cognitive Impairment
from normal. The potential for MEG is both as a diagnostic tool and as
a means to measure the response to new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
Other areas of my research include examining the factors that influence the
diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, including age and the rate of progression,
and the impact of an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease In
a paper to be published soon in the Journal of Gerontology, we found
that increasing age was correlated with a delay in the recognition of symptoms
in Alzheimer’s disease. In other words, the older you are, the
worse your Alzheimer’s by the time you are diagnosed. The rate
of progression of Alzheimer’s disease, however, was not related to age.
We firmly believe that early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, regardless of age,
is important to patients and families because it allows them time to plan for
the predictable consequences of advancing dementia. The symptoms of Alzheimer’s
disease are manageable. When symptoms are overlooked or ignored, however,
patients and families tend to leap from crisis to crisis, scrambling to address
problems created by the impaired thinking and dementia-related behaviors caused
by the disease. We are examining the impact of early diagnosis in several
ongoing studies.
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