1.Amyloid, dementia, and age-related disorders. Clinical, epidemiological, and experimental studies are ongoing. We particularly focus on protein aggregation as pathogenesis of protein misfolding disorders to develop preventives/therapeutics for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB)/Parkinson’s disease, and other aging-related disorders.
2.Neuroimmunology. Our research has focused on myasthenia gravis and other neuroimmunological disorders.
3.Imaging and functional analyses of brain. AD, DLB, CAA, and other age-related disorders have been studied with MRI, PET (FDG/amyloid), MIBG myocardial scintigraphy, MEG, and other modalities.
4.Population-based study on brain aging and dementia (“Nakajima Study”). The project is ongoing in the town of Nakajima, Nanao city, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan since 2006, in order to develop methods of early detection and prevention of cognitive impairment in the aging population. As preventive factors for cognitive impairment, we have focused on natural compounds in diets; the Nakajima Study identified preventive factors such as green tea, which lead us to basic studies with in vitro and in vivo AD models, and, then, to clinical/preventive interventions with the dietary compound.