Takeaway
Severe and extensive synaptic loss in the frontotemporal cortex is associated with the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), reflecting its clinical severity.
Why this matters
Postmortem studies and animal models have shown that early and significant synaptic loss was a feature of FTD. The availability of new imaging tools now enables in vivo assessment of synaptic density.
This knowledge will inform the design of future clinical trials for disease-modifying therapy in neurodegeneration. Synaptic density, as measured by [11 C]UCB-J PET, can be a metric for patient stratification and outcome assessment.