Abstract

BackgroundAmnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), which is recently considered as a high risk status for developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD), manifests with gray matter atrophy and increased focal functional activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL). However, the abnormalities of whole-brain functional network connectivity in aMCI and its relationship to medial temporal atrophy (MTA) remain unknown.MethodsIn this study, thirty-six aMCI patients and thirty-five healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. Neuropsychological assessments and MTA visual rating scaling were carried out on all participants. Furthermore, whole brain functional network was constructed at voxel level, and functional connectivity strength (FCS) was computed as the sum of the connections for each node to capture its global integrity. General linear model was used to analyze the FCS values differences between aMCI and HCs. Then, the regions showing significant FCS differences were adopted as the imaging markers for discriminative analysis. Finally, the relationship between FCS values and clinical cognitive scores was correlated in patients with aMCI.ResultsComparing to HCs, aMCI exhibited significant atrophy in the MTL, while higher FCS values within the bilateral MTL regions and orbitofrontal cortices. Notably, the right hippocampus had the highest classification power, with the area under receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve (AUC) of 0.790 (confidence interval: 0.678, 0.901). Moreover, FCS values of the right hippocampus and the left temporal pole were positively correlated with the cognitive performance in aMCI.ConclusionThis study demonstrated significantly structural atrophy and raised global functional integrity in the MTL, suggesting simultaneous disruption and compensation in prodromal AD. Increased intrinsic functional connectivity in the MTL may have the potential to discriminate subjects with tendency to develop AD.

Highlights

  • Alzheimer’s disease (AD), characterized by progressive decline of memory and other cognitive domains, is the most common form of neurodegenerative disorders leading to dementia [1, 2]

  • This study demonstrated significantly structural atrophy and raised global functional integrity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), suggesting simultaneous disruption and compensation in prodromal AD

  • Thirty-six Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients were recruited from the Memory Clinic of the Department of Neurology, XuanWu Hospital of Capital Medical University, Beijing, China and thirty-five demographically matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited from communities by advertisements during June 2013 to March 2015

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Summary

Background

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), which is recently considered as a high risk status for developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD), manifests with gray matter atrophy and increased focal functional activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL). The abnormalities of whole-brain functional network connectivity in aMCI and its relationship to medial temporal atrophy (MTA) remain unknown

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