A flurry of such studies occurred—some showed brain differences in Alzheimer’s disease risk gene carriers a full 50 years before AD typically strikes (Braskie et al. 2011; Bralten et al. 2011). Others showed a pattern of brain changes in unaffected carriers that resembled the “footprint” of Alzheimer’s disease in the living brain (Biffi et al. 2010; Erk et al. 2011, Rajagopalan et al. 2013). These findings will require follow-up but illustrate the potential of using neuroimaging measures to explore the effects of genetic variation.
