Hippocampus- and thalamus-related fiber-specific white matter reductions in mild cognitive impairment

Yu Zhou, Xiaopeng Si*, Yuanyuan Chen, Yiping Chao, Ching Po Lin, Sicheng Li, Xingjian Zhang, Dong Ming*, Qiang Li*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

Early diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) fascinates screening high-risk Alzheimer's disease (AD). White matter is found to degenerate earlier than gray matter and functional connectivity during MCI. Although studies reveal white matter degenerates in the limbic system for MCI, how other white matter degenerates during MCI remains unclear. In our method, regions of interest with a high level of resting-state functional connectivity with hippocampus were selected as seeds to track fibers based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). In this way, hippocampus-temporal and thalamus-related fibers were selected, and each fiber's DTI parameters were extracted. Then, statistical analysis, machine learning classification, and Pearson's correlations with behavior scores were performed between MCI and normal control (NC) groups. Results show that: 1) the mean diffusivity of hippocampus-temporal and thalamus-related fibers are significantly higher in MCI and could be used to classify 2 groups effectively. 2) Compared with normal fibers, the degenerated fibers detected by the DTI indexes, especially for hippocampus-temporal fibers, have shown significantly higher correlations with cognitive scores. 3) Compared with the hippocampus-temporal fibers, thalamus-related fibers have shown significantly higher correlations with depression scores within MCI. Our results provide novel biomarkers for the early diagnoses of AD.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3159-3174
Number of pages16
JournalCerebral Cortex
Volume32
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - 01 08 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Alzheimer's disease
  • cognition
  • depression
  • diffusion tensor imaging
  • mean diffusivity

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