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Um YH, Wang SM, Kang DW, Kim S, Lee CU, Kim D, Choe YS, Kim REY, Lee S, Lim HK. Sex-Related Disparities in the Resting State Functional Connectivity of the Locus Coeruelus and Salience Network in Preclinical Alzheimer's Disease. Int J Mol Sci 2023; 24:15092. [PMID: 37894772 PMCID: PMC10606651 DOI: 10.3390/ijms242015092] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2023] [Revised: 10/09/2023] [Accepted: 10/10/2023] [Indexed: 10/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Recent studies have demonstrated the pivotal role of locus coeruleus (LC) and salience network (SN) resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) changes in the early stage of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Moreover, sex has been a crucial point of discussion in understanding AD pathology. We aimed to demonstrate the sex-related disparities in the functional connectivity (FC) of the SN and LC in preclinical AD. A total of 89 cognitively normal patients with evidence of amyloid beta (Aβ) accumulation ([18F] flutemetamol +) were recruited in the study. A seed-to-voxel analysis was conducted to measure the LC and SN rsFC differences between sexes. In addition, sex by Aβ interactive effects on FC values were analyzed with a general linear model. There were statistically significant sex by regional standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR) interactions in the LC FC with the parietal, frontal, and occipital cortices. Moreover, there was a significant sex by global SUVR interaction in the SN FC with the temporal cortex. The findings suggest that there are differential patterns of LC FC and SN FC in males and females with preclinical AD, which interact with regional Aβ deposition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yoo Hyun Um
- Department of Psychiatry, St. Vincent’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea
| | - Sheng-Min Wang
- Department of Psychiatry, Yeouido St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea
| | - Dong Woo Kang
- Department of Psychiatry, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea
| | - Sunghwan Kim
- Department of Psychiatry, Yeouido St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea
| | - Chang Uk Lee
- Department of Psychiatry, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea
| | - Donghyeon Kim
- Research Institute, Neurophet Inc., Seoul 08380, Republic of Korea
| | - Yeong Sim Choe
- Research Institute, Neurophet Inc., Seoul 08380, Republic of Korea
| | - Regina E. Y. Kim
- Research Institute, Neurophet Inc., Seoul 08380, Republic of Korea
| | - Soyoung Lee
- Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Hyun Kook Lim
- Department of Psychiatry, Yeouido St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 06591, Republic of Korea
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Dang C, Wang Y, Li Q, Lu Y. Neuroimaging modalities in the detection of Alzheimer's disease-associated biomarkers. PSYCHORADIOLOGY 2023; 3:kkad009. [PMID: 38666112 PMCID: PMC11003434 DOI: 10.1093/psyrad/kkad009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/07/2023] [Revised: 06/04/2023] [Accepted: 06/20/2023] [Indexed: 04/28/2024]
Abstract
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. Neuropathological changes in AD patients occur up to 10-20 years before the emergence of clinical symptoms. Specific diagnosis and appropriate intervention strategies are crucial during the phase of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD. The detection of biomarkers has emerged as a promising tool for tracking the efficacy of potential therapies, making an early disease diagnosis, and prejudging treatment prognosis. Specifically, multiple neuroimaging modalities, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography, optical imaging, and single photon emission-computed tomography, have provided a few potential biomarkers for clinical application. The MRI modalities described in this review include structural MRI, functional MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and arterial spin labelling. These techniques allow the detection of presymptomatic diagnostic biomarkers in the brains of cognitively normal elderly people and might also be used to monitor AD disease progression after the onset of clinical symptoms. This review highlights potential biomarkers, merits, and demerits of different neuroimaging modalities and their clinical value in MCI and AD patients. Further studies are necessary to explore more biomarkers and overcome the limitations of multiple neuroimaging modalities for inclusion in diagnostic criteria for AD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chun Dang
- Department of Periodical Press, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610000, China
| | - Yanchao Wang
- Department of Neurology, Chifeng University of Affiliated Hospital, Chifeng 024000, China
| | - Qian Li
- Department of Neurology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150081, China
| | - Yaoheng Lu
- Department of General Surgery, Chengdu Integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine Hospital, Chengdu 610000, China
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Leng Y, Cui W, Peng Y, Yan C, Cao Y, Yan Z, Chen S, Jiang X, Zheng J. Multimodal cross enhanced fusion network for diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and subjective memory complaints. Comput Biol Med 2023; 157:106788. [PMID: 36958233 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.106788] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/29/2022] [Revised: 02/09/2023] [Accepted: 03/11/2023] [Indexed: 03/15/2023]
Abstract
Deep learning methods using multimodal imagings have been proposed for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and its early stages (SMC, subjective memory complaints), which may help to slow the progression of the disease through early intervention. However, current fusion methods for multimodal imagings are generally coarse and may lead to suboptimal results through the use of shared extractors or simple downscaling stitching. Another issue with diagnosing brain diseases is that they often affect multiple areas of the brain, making it important to consider potential connections throughout the brain. However, traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) may struggle with this issue due to their limited local receptive fields. To address this, many researchers have turned to transformer networks, which can provide global information about the brain but can be computationally intensive and perform poorly on small datasets. In this work, we propose a novel lightweight network called MENet that adaptively recalibrates the multiscale long-range receptive field to localize discriminative brain regions in a computationally efficient manner. Based on this, the network extracts the intensity and location responses between structural magnetic resonance imagings (sMRI) and 18-Fluoro-Deoxy-Glucose Positron Emission computed Tomography (FDG-PET) as an enhancement fusion for AD and SMC diagnosis. Our method is evaluated on the publicly available ADNI datasets and achieves 97.67% accuracy in AD diagnosis tasks and 81.63% accuracy in SMC diagnosis tasks using sMRI and FDG-PET. These results achieve state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance in both tasks. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first deep learning research methods for SMC diagnosis with FDG-PET.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yilin Leng
- Institute of Biomedical Engineering, School of Communication and Information Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China; Department of Medical Imaging, Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215163, China.
| | - Wenju Cui
- Department of Medical Imaging, Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215163, China; School of Biomedical Engineering (Suzhou), Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China
| | - Yunsong Peng
- Department of Medical Imaging, International Exemplary Cooperation Base of Precision Imaging for Diagnosis and Treatment, Guizhou Provincial People's Hospital, Guizhou, 550002, China
| | - Caiying Yan
- Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Suzhou Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Suzhou, 211103, China
| | - Yuzhu Cao
- Department of Medical Imaging, Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215163, China; School of Biomedical Engineering (Suzhou), Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China
| | - Zhuangzhi Yan
- Institute of Biomedical Engineering, School of Communication and Information Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China
| | - Shuangqing Chen
- Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Suzhou Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Suzhou, 211103, China.
| | - Xi Jiang
- Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 611731, China.
| | - Jian Zheng
- Department of Medical Imaging, Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215163, China; School of Biomedical Engineering (Suzhou), Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
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Chen Y, Wang Y, Song Z, Fan Y, Gao T, Tang X. Abnormal white matter changes in Alzheimer's disease based on diffusion tensor imaging: A systematic review. Ageing Res Rev 2023; 87:101911. [PMID: 36931328 DOI: 10.1016/j.arr.2023.101911] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 15.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2022] [Revised: 03/01/2023] [Accepted: 03/13/2023] [Indexed: 03/17/2023]
Abstract
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a degenerative neurological disease in elderly individuals. Subjective cognitive decline (SCD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and further development to dementia (d-AD) are considered to be major stages of the progressive pathological development of AD. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), one of the most important modalities of MRI, can describe the microstructure of white matter through its tensor model. It is widely used in understanding the central nervous system mechanism and finding appropriate potential biomarkers for the early stages of AD. Based on the multilevel analysis methods of DTI (voxelwise, fiberwise and networkwise), we summarized that AD patients mainly showed extensive microstructural damage, structural disconnection and topological abnormalities in the corpus callosum, fornix, and medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus and cingulum. The diffusion features and structural connectomics of specific regions can provide information for the early assisted recognition of AD. The classification accuracy of SCD and normal controls can reach 92.68% at present. And due to the further changes of brain structure and function, the classification accuracy of MCI, d-AD and normal controls can reach more than 97%. Finally, we summarized the limitations of current DTI-based AD research and propose possible future research directions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yu Chen
- School of Medical Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Yifei Wang
- School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Zeyu Song
- School of Medical Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Yingwei Fan
- School of Medical Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Tianxin Gao
- School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
| | - Xiaoying Tang
- School of Medical Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
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Syndrome Pattern Recognition Method Using Sensed Patient Data for Neurodegenerative Disease Progression Identification. Diagnostics (Basel) 2023; 13:diagnostics13050887. [PMID: 36900031 PMCID: PMC10000542 DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics13050887] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/13/2023] [Revised: 02/22/2023] [Accepted: 02/24/2023] [Indexed: 03/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Neurodegenerative diseases are a group of conditions that involve the progressive loss of function of neurons in the brain and spinal cord. These conditions can result in a wide range of symptoms, such as difficulty with movement, speech, and cognition. The causes of neurodegenerative diseases are poorly understood, but many factors are believed to contribute to the development of these conditions. The most important risk factors include ageing, genetics, abnormal medical conditions, toxins, and environmental exposures. A slow decline in visible cognitive functions characterises the progression of these diseases. If left unattended or unnoticed, disease progression can result in serious issues such as the cessation of motor function or even paralysis. Therefore, early recognition of neurodegenerative diseases is becoming increasingly important in modern healthcare. Many sophisticated artificial intelligence technologies are incorporated into modern healthcare systems for the early recognition of these diseases. This research article introduces a Syndrome-dependent Pattern Recognition Method for the early detection and progression monitoring of neurodegenerative diseases. The proposed method determines the variance between normal and abnormal intrinsic neural connectivity data. The observed data is combined with previous and healthy function examination data to identify the variance. In this combined analysis, deep recurrent learning is exploited by tuning the analysis layer based on variance suppressed by identifying normal and abnormal patterns in the combined analysis. This variance from different patterns is recurrently used to train the learning model for maximising of recognition accuracy. The proposed method achieves 16.77% high accuracy, 10.55% high precision, and 7.69% high pattern verification. It reduces the variance and verification time by 12.08% and 12.02%, respectively.
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Sibilano E, Brunetti A, Buongiorno D, Lassi M, Grippo A, Bessi V, Micera S, Mazzoni A, Bevilacqua V. An attention-based deep learning approach for the classification of subjective cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment using resting-state EEG. J Neural Eng 2023; 20. [PMID: 36745929 DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/acb96e] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/04/2022] [Accepted: 02/06/2023] [Indexed: 02/08/2023]
Abstract
Objective. This study aims to design and implement the first deep learning (DL) model to classify subjects in the prodromic states of Alzheimer's disease (AD) based on resting-state electroencephalographic (EEG) signals.Approach. EEG recordings of 17 healthy controls (HCs), 56 subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and 45 mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects were acquired at resting state. After preprocessing, we selected sections corresponding to eyes-closed condition. Five different datasets were created by extracting delta, theta, alpha, beta and delta-to-theta frequency bands using bandpass filters. To classify SCDvsMCI and HCvsSCDvsMCI, we propose a framework based on the transformer architecture, which uses multi-head attention to focus on the most relevant parts of the input signals. We trained and validated the model on each dataset with a leave-one-subject-out cross-validation approach, splitting the signals into 10 s epochs. Subjects were assigned to the same class as the majority of their epochs. Classification performances of the transformer were assessed for both epochs and subjects and compared with other DL models.Main results. Results showed that the delta dataset allowed our model to achieve the best performances for the discrimination of SCD and MCI, reaching an Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) of 0.807, while the highest results for the HCvsSCDvsMCI classification were obtained on alpha and theta with a micro-AUC higher than 0.74.Significance. We demonstrated that DL approaches can support the adoption of non-invasive and economic techniques as EEG to stratify patients in the clinical population at risk for AD. This result was achieved since the attention mechanism was able to learn temporal dependencies of the signal, focusing on the most discriminative patterns, achieving state-of-the-art results by using a deep model of reduced complexity. Our results were consistent with clinical evidence that changes in brain activity are progressive when considering early stages of AD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Sibilano
- Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
| | - Antonio Brunetti
- Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
| | - Domenico Buongiorno
- Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
| | - Michael Lassi
- The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, 56025 Pisa, Italy
| | | | - Valentina Bessi
- Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child Health, University of Florence, Azienda Ospedaliera Careggi, Florence, Italy
| | - Silvestro Micera
- The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, 56025 Pisa, Italy.,Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Translational Neuroengineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics, Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | - Alberto Mazzoni
- The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, 56025 Pisa, Italy
| | - Vitoantonio Bevilacqua
- Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
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Yu J, Kong Z, Zhan L, Shen L, He L. Tensor-Based Multi-Modality Feature Selection and Regression for Alzheimer's Disease Diagnosis. COMPUTER SCIENCE & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 2022; 12:123-134. [PMID: 36880061 PMCID: PMC9985071 DOI: 10.5121/csit.2022.121812] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
The assessment of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) associated with brain changes remains a challenging task. Recent studies have demonstrated that combination of multi-modality imaging techniques can better reflect pathological characteristics and contribute to more accurate diagnosis of AD and MCI. In this paper, we propose a novel tensor-based multi-modality feature selection and regression method for diagnosis and biomarker identification of AD and MCI from normal controls. Specifically, we leverage the tensor structure to exploit high-level correlation information inherent in the multi-modality data, and investigate tensor-level sparsity in the multilinear regression model. We present the practical advantages of our method for the analysis of ADNI data using three imaging modalities (VBM-MRI, FDG-PET and AV45-PET) with clinical parameters of disease severity and cognitive scores. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed method against the state-of-the-art for the disease diagnosis and the identification of disease-specific regions and modality-related differences. The code for this work is publicly available at https://github.com/junfish/BIOS22.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jun Yu
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Zhaoming Kong
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Liang Zhan
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Li Shen
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, The Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Lifang He
- Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
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Alm KH, Soldan A, Pettigrew C, Faria AV, Hou X, Lu H, Moghekar A, Mori S, Albert M, Bakker A. Structural and Functional Brain Connectivity Uniquely Contribute to Episodic Memory Performance in Older Adults. Front Aging Neurosci 2022; 14:951076. [PMID: 35903538 PMCID: PMC9315224 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.951076] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/23/2022] [Accepted: 06/15/2022] [Indexed: 01/26/2023] Open
Abstract
In this study, we examined the independent contributions of structural and functional connectivity markers to individual differences in episodic memory performance in 107 cognitively normal older adults from the BIOCARD study. Structural connectivity, defined by the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measure of radial diffusivity (RD), was obtained from two medial temporal lobe white matter tracts: the fornix and hippocampal cingulum, while functional connectivity markers were derived from network-based resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) of five large-scale brain networks: the control, default, limbic, dorsal attention, and salience/ventral attention networks. Hierarchical and stepwise linear regression methods were utilized to directly compare the relative contributions of the connectivity modalities to individual variability in a composite delayed episodic memory score, while also accounting for age, sex, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of amyloid and tau pathology (i.e., Aβ42/Aβ40 and p-tau181), and gray matter volumes of the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus. Results revealed that fornix RD, hippocampal cingulum RD, and salience network functional connectivity were each significant independent predictors of memory performance, while CSF markers and gray matter volumes were not. Moreover, in the stepwise model, the addition of sex, fornix RD, hippocampal cingulum RD, and salience network functional connectivity each significantly improved the overall predictive value of the model. These findings demonstrate that both DTI and rsfMRI connectivity measures uniquely contributed to the model and that the combination of structural and functional connectivity markers best accounted for individual variability in episodic memory function in cognitively normal older adults.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kylie H. Alm
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Anja Soldan
- Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Corinne Pettigrew
- Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Andreia V. Faria
- Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Xirui Hou
- Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Hanzhang Lu
- Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Abhay Moghekar
- Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Susumu Mori
- Department of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Marilyn Albert
- Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States
| | - Arnold Bakker
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States,Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States,*Correspondence: Arnold Bakker,
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Peng L, Feng J, Ma D, Xu X, Gao X. Rich-Club Organization Disturbances of the Individual Morphological Network in Subjective Cognitive Decline. Front Aging Neurosci 2022; 14:834145. [PMID: 35283748 PMCID: PMC8914315 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.834145] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/13/2021] [Accepted: 01/28/2022] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
BackgroundSubjective cognitive decline (SCD) was considered to be the preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, less is known about the altered rich-club organizations of the morphological networks in individuals with SCD.MethodsThis study included 53 individuals with SCD and 54 well-matched healthy controls (HC) from the Alzheimer’s disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database. Individual-level brain morphological networks were constructed by estimating the Jensen-Shannon distance-based similarity in the distribution of regional gray matter volume. Rich-club properties were then detected, followed by statistical comparison.ResultsThe characteristic rich-club organization of morphological networks (normalized rich-club coefficients > 1) was observed for both the SCD and HC groups under a range of thresholds. The SCD group showed a reduced normalized rich-club coefficient compared with the HC group. The SCD group exhibited the decreased strength and degree of rich-club connections than the HC group (strength: HC = 79.93, SCD = 74.37, p = 0.028; degree: HC = 85.28, SCD = 79.34, p = 0.027). Interestingly, the SCD group showed an increased strength of local connections than the HC group (strength: HC = 1982.16, SCD = 2003.38, p = 0.036).ConclusionRich-club organization disturbances of morphological networks in individuals with SCD reveal a distinct pattern between the rich-club and peripheral regions. This altered rich-club organization pattern provides novel insights into the underlying mechanism of SCD and could be used to investigate prevention strategies at the preclinical stage of AD.
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Affiliation(s)
- Liling Peng
- Shanghai Universal Medical Imaging Diagnostic Center, Shanghai, China
| | - Jing Feng
- The Fifth People’s Hospital of Jinan, Jinan, China
| | - Di Ma
- College of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China
| | - Xiaowen Xu
- Department of Medical Imaging, School of Medicine, Tongji Hospital, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
- *Correspondence: Xiaowen Xu,
| | - Xin Gao
- Shanghai Universal Medical Imaging Diagnostic Center, Shanghai, China
- Xin Gao,
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