P 70 MR imaging correlates of impaired eye movement control in parkinsonian syndromes

Abstract

Background The neurophysiology of eye movement control provides a window into brain pathology in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), Multisystem Atrophy (MSA) and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) ( Gorges et al., 2016 ). Structural and functional brain architecture can be investigated using Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), Atlas-based morphometry (ABV) and “resting-state” fMRI. Objective To investigate the association between impaired oculomotor control and both volumetric as well as structural and functional brain connectivity changes in PD, MSA, and PSP patients. Methods A total of 152 patients including 71 PD, 56 PSP, and 25 MSA patients together with 56 matched healthy controls underwent video-oculographic examination (EyeSeeCam®) and whole-brain based DTI, high-resolution3DT1-weighted, and ‘resting-state’ MRI. Results Impaired executive oculomotor control was a prominent feature in PD as measured for the rate of saccadic intrusions (p Conclusions Worse oculomotor performance in the disease-specific domain was associated with more severely impaired regional macro- and microstructure and reduced regional functional connectivity in disease-specific brain structures. These findings increase our pathophysiological knowledge of the underlying parkinsonism-associated pathology and pave the way towards a video-oculographic surrogate marker.