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Functional compensation on disrupted cingulate structural network in Parkinson’s disease

Cheng Zhou¹ and Minming Zhang¹
¹Zhejiang university, Hangzhou, China

Synopsis

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and its related brain changes appear not to be localized in isolate region but rather in the networks. We desire to exploring the large-scale structural and functional networks change which are of great importance for understanding the mechanism of disease. Moreover, it deserves to further answer the unsolved question that whether a functional compensation resulting from structural network disruption and whether such effect would be lasting or changed longitudinally.

Introduction

Parkinson’s disease (PD) related brain changes appear not to be localized in isolate region like substantia nigra but rather in the network of a multitude of brain regions^{1,
2, 3}. Exploring the large-scale networks changes is of great importance for diagnosis or understanding the mechanism of PD.

Methods

One hundred and four PD patients and 77 healthy controls were included in this study. Deformation-based morphometry and independent component analysis (ICA) were conducted to assess the disruption of large-scale structural networks in PD patients^{4, 5, 6}. Functional ICA was performed in the same set of subjects. The components showed best spatial overlap with disrupted structural networks were selected as the corresponding functional networks and the changes of network connectivity in PD patients were assessed. Then, the association between structural network integrity and the strength of functional network connectivity were evaluated. Moreover, longitudinal analysis was conducted to further validate the functional connectivity alterations in 37 of the patients who had follow-up data.

Results

PD patients showed decreased structural covariance between anterior and posterior cingulate networks (Figure 1). PD patients showed increased connectivity between anterior and posterior cingulate functional networks at baseline and decreased connectivity at follow-up (Figure 2 and 3). Increased functional connectivity was negatively correlated with decreased integrity of the cingulate structural network (Figure 4).

Conclusion

Our findings suggested that cingulate structural network which was similar to the default mode network display a high susceptibility in PD patients. Decreased covariance between anterior and posterior cingulate structural networks might indicate the structural basis of cognitive impairment, and increased functional connectivity between them could provide a temporal compensation on structural disruption.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the team at the department of Radiology, the Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310009, China.

References

1, Braak, H., Ghebremedhin, E., Rub, U., Bratzke, H., & Del Tredici, K. (2004). Stages in the development of Parkinson's disease-related pathology. Cell Tissue Res, 318(1), 121-134. doi:10.1007/s00441-004-0956-9

2, Jellinger, K. A. (2012). Neuropathology of sporadic Parkinson's disease: evaluation and changes of concepts. Mov Disord, 27(1), 8-30. doi:10.1002/mds.23795

3, de Schipper, L. J., van der Grond, J., Marinus, J., Henselmans, J. M. L., & van Hilten, J. J. (2017). Loss of integrity and atrophy in cingulate structural covariance networks in Parkinson's disease. NeuroImage: Clinical, 15, 587-593. doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2017.05.012

4, Beckmann, C. F., & Smith, S. M. (2004). Probabilistic independent component analysis for functional magnetic resonance imaging. IEEE Trans Med Imaging, 23(2), 137-152. doi:10.1109/tmi.2003.822821

5, Chung, M. K., Worsley, K. J., Robbins, S., Paus, T., Taylor, J., Giedd, J. N., . . . Evans, A. C. (2003). Deformation-based surface morphometry applied to gray matter deformation. NeuroImage, 18(2), 198-213.

6, Xu, L., Groth, K. M., Pearlson, G., Schretlen, D. J., & Calhoun, V. D. (2009). Source-based morphometry: The use of independent component analysis to identify gray matter differences with application to schizophrenia. Human Brain Mapping, 30(3), 711-724. doi:10.1002/hbm.20540

Figures

Fig 1. Decreased covariance between anterior and posterior cingulate structural networks in PD patients The posterior cingulate gyrus was not express in the cingulate network but expressed in the frontoparietal network which indicate the decreased covariance between anterior and posterior cingulate structural networks.

Fig 2. Functional network connectivity A. Anterior and posterior cingulate functional network in healthy controls and PD patients (FEW corrected, p = 0.001). B. The changes of functional network connectivity between the anterior and posterior cingulate functional network in healthy controls and PD patients.

Fig 3. Longitudinal change of functional network connectivity

Fig 4. Association between structural network integrity and the strength of functional network connectivity

Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 28 (2020)

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