Professor Bradley T. Christian - medical physics

Professor Bradley T. Christian is a professor of Medical Physics and Psychiatry and the Director of PET Physics at Waisman Brain Imaging Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. He received his B.S. in 1989 in physics at St. John’s University. He proceeded to get a M.S. in 1991 and his Ph.D. in 1994, both in Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current research focuses on using PET radiotracers to study brain chemistry. He focuses on Alzheimer's disease, and investigates brain pathways involving dopamine, serotonin, and other neurochemical systems.

Recently, Professor Christian used positron emission tomography to assess memory in patients with Down syndrome. He performed a variety of scans to identify a variety of markers in the brain such as Aβ and tau to figure out if the tau PET biomarker is related to early memory impairment. He found that tau was negatively associated with memory in Aβ+ groups but not in Aβ- groups.  This finding is similar to Alzheimer's disease where high tau indicated dementia in Down syndrome.

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8976157/pdf/DAD2-14-e12256.pdf

https://www.medphysics.wisc.edu/blog/staff/christian-bradley-t/