Abstract
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is clinically characterized by memory loss and cognitive impairment closely associated with the hippocampal atrophy. Accumulating studies have confirmed the presence of neural signal changes within white matter (WM) in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, it remains unclear how abnormal hippocampus activity affects the WM regions in MCI. The current study employs 43 MCI, 71 very MCI (VMCI) and 87 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy controls (HCs) from the public OASIS-3 dataset. Using the left and right hippocampus as seed points, we obtained the whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) maps for each subject. We then perform one-way ANOVA analysis to investigate the abnormal FC regions among HCs, VMCI, and MCI. We further performed probabilistic tracking to estimate whether the abnormal FC correspond to structural connectivity disruptions. Compared to HCs, MCI and VMCI groups exhibited reduced FC in the right middle temporal gyrus within gray matter, and right temporal pole, right inferior frontal gyrus within white matter. Specific dysconnectivity is shown in the cerebellum Crus II, left inferior temporal gyrus within gray matter, and right frontal gyrus within white matter. In addition, the fiber bundles connecting the left hippocampus and right temporal pole within white matter show abnormally increased mean diffusivity in MCI. The current study proposes a new functional imaging direction for exploring the mechanism of memory decline and pathophysiological mechanisms in different stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
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Data availability
The current study employed the public available dataset from the OASIS-3 dataset (https://central.xnat.org). The OASIS-3 is a compilation of MRI and PET imaging data collected from several studies conducted by the Knight AD Research Center at the University of Washington over the past 15 years. All subjects had provided informed consent before MRI or neurological assessment. In addition, clinical scale information for all patients has been obtained.
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This work was supported by the China MOST2030 Brain Project (Grant numbers: 2022ZD0208500) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant numbers: 61871420, 62171101).
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Jiang, Y., Wang, P., Wen, J. et al. Hippocampus-based static functional connectivity map** within white matter in mild cognitive impairment. Brain Struct Funct 227, 2285–2297 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-022-02521-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-022-02521-x