Abstract
BackgroundAmyloid β (Aβ) and tau proteins are considered as critical factors that affect Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Although many studies have conducted on these two proteins, little study has investigated the relationship between their spatial distributions. This study aims to explore the associations of spatial patterns between Aβ deposition and tau deposition in patients with MCI and normal control (NC).MethodsWe used multimodality positron emission tomography (PET) data from a clinically heterogeneous population of patients with MCI and NC. All data were obtained from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database containing information of 65 patients with MCI and 75 NC who both had undergone AV45 (Aβ) and AV1451 (tau) PET. To assess the spatial distribution of Aβ and tau deposition, we employed parallel independent component analysis (pICA), which enabled the joint analysis of multimodal imaging data. pICA was conducted to identify the significant difference and correlation relationship of brain networks between Aβ PET and tau PET in MCI and NC groups.ResultsOur results revealed the strongly correlated network between Aβ PET and tau PET were colocalized with the default-mode network (DMN). Simultaneously, in comparison of the spatial distribution between Aβ PET and tau PET, it was found that the significant differences between MCI and NC were mainly distributed in DMN, cognitive control network and visual networks. The altered brain networks obtained from pICA analysis are consistent with the abnormalities of brain network in MCI patients.ConclusionsFindings suggested the abnormal spatial distribution regions of tau PET were correlated with the abnormal spatial distribution regions of Aβ PET, and both of which were located in DMN network. This study revealed that combining pICA with multimodal imaging data is an effective approach for distinguishing MCI patients from NC group.
Highlights
Amyloid β (Aβ) and tau proteins are considered as critical factors that affect Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI)
No significant difference was observed in sex, age, or Apolipoprotein E ε4 allele (APOE4) between the MCI and normal control (NC) groups
We detected the networks with significant differences in tau positron emission tomography (PET) group as follows: visual
Summary
Amyloid β (Aβ) and tau proteins are considered as critical factors that affect Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Amyloid β (Aβ) and tau proteins have been recognized as two important factors that cause Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) [1, 2]. Little imaging study has investigated the correlated brain networks of these two proteins far. ICA is a data-driven analysis method to study brain networks conducted by neuroimaging. It was widely used in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) [8, 9], magnetoencephalography [10], electroencephalography [11], structural MRI [12], and PET imaging [13]. Fu L et al [18] conducted on the spatial correlation network of Aβ protein and fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)
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