Gray matter atrophy is associated with functional connectivity reorganization during the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) execution in Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Translational validity of PASAT and the effect of fatigue and mood in patients with relapsing remitting MS: A functional MRI study

“…Yet when we applied between‐group analysis, no statistically significant residual activations were obtained. This result, however, is in line with a study conducted by Baltruschat et al in which the execution of PASAT was assessed by using fMRI …”

Increased regional gray matter atrophy and enhanced functional connectivity in male multiple sclerosis patients

“…Increased FC has previously been understood as a secondary neuropathological sign of MS progresion [14] or as a compensatory mechanism for early MS neuropathological changes [12,13]. Only the later interpretation would be coherent with several additional findings of our study: 1) the direct correlation found between FC and GM atrophy; 2) the fading gender-related differences in FC when GM volume was introduced as a covariate; 3) lack of differences in neurological and neuropsychological performance (see Table 1) between Male-and Female-MSp despite their different degrees of GM atrophy in several brain regions; 4) the positive association of remaining GM volume and FC scores with attentional capabilities in Male-but not in Female-MSp.…”

“…As previous studies [12,13] have suggested that increased FC is a secondary response to primary MS-related neuropathological changes in GM, we explored the relationship between both variables. We found that the FC scores on the three pathways, where we observed gender differences within MS patients ( Figure 1B), were inversely related to the GM volume in the two frontal areas, where the Male-and Female-MS subgroups also differed ( Figure 1A).…”

“…Increased FC resulting from GM atrophy in MS patients has been interpreted in two different ways: Either as maladaptive and, as such, a sign of MS neuropathological progression [14] or, to the contrary, as a compensatory mechanism promoting normal cognitive competence of MS patients at initial stages of the disease [12,13]. To find out which of these two alternatives applies to our observations, we analyzed the relationship between FC, GM volume and cognitive performance in Male-and Female-MSp.…”

Brain Parenchymal Fraction in Healthy Adults—A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…We were able to get in touch with two of the corresponding authors [9, 10] and assessed the methodology of the rest of the mentioned articles according to our best effort.…”