To address this question, this 12-week continuous treatment, double-blind, head-to-head dose-escalation treatment trial seeks to visualize any treatment response unique to allosteric nicotinic receptor modulation and to associate these fMRI data with standard cognitive assessment outcomes. Using in-scanner tasks shown to reliably elicit brain activity in cortical regions important to memory and attention, this treatment trial will examine both resting and task-related BOLD signal characteristics in a well-characterized sample of 36 mild AD patients after periods of low dose and high dose AD dementia treatment with either galantamine hydrobromide (AChEI + nicotinic receptor modulation) or donepezil hydrochloride (AChEI only). Both the low and high dose imaging comparisons between treatment groups will be equivalent for 35% AChEI-effect, which may allow for the isolation of BOLD signal unique to allosteric nicotinic receptor modulation in both brain at rest and task-related brain states.