Abstract
Objective: To investigate relationships between whole-brain functional changes and the performance of multiple cognitive functions in early Parkinson’s disease (PD).Methods: In the current study, we evaluated resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI) data and neuropsychological assessments for various cognitive functions in a cohort with 84 early PD patients from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI). Eigenvector centrality (EC) mapping based on rsfMRI was used to identify the functional connectivity of brain areas correlated with different neuropsychological scores at a whole-brain level.Results: Our study demonstrated that in the early PD patients, scores of Letter Number Sequencing (LNS) were positively correlated with EC in the left inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) and lingual gyrus. The immediate recall scores of Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R) were positively correlated with EC in the left superior frontal gyrus. No correlation was found between the EC and other cognitive performance scores.Conclusions: Functional alternations in the left occipital lobe (inferior occipital and lingual gyrus) and left superior frontal gyrus may account for the performance of working memory and immediate recall memory, respectively in early PD. These results may broaden the understanding of the potential mechanism of cognitive impairments in early PD.
Highlights
Cognitive impairment is a serious and common nonmotor symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD), which has received increasing attention in recent years
We aimed to investigate the alterations of functional connections that were associated with the performance of multiple cognitive functions over the entire brain in early PD patients by using Eigenvector centrality (EC) as a mapping tool
EC mapping (ECM) analysis showed that EC values in the left inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) and lingual gyrus were positively correlated with the scores of the Letter Number Sequencing (LNS) test (Figure 1, Table 2)
Summary
Cognitive impairment is a serious and common nonmotor symptom of Parkinson’s disease (PD), which has received increasing attention in recent years. It can occur at different stages of PD, even at the time of PD diagnosis (Williams-Gray et al, 2007). Dysfunction in various cognitive domains has Cognitive Network in Early PD been reported in the early stages of PD before overt dementia, such as executive functions, memory, attention, visuospatial performance, and language (Yarnall et al, 2014; Aarsland et al, 2017). A previous study suggested that deficits in specific cognitive functions imposed different degrees of risk for developing dementia (Pagonabarraga and Kulisevsky, 2012). The potential brain mechanisms of dysfunction in the processes of diverse cognitive functions remain to be fully studied
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