Impaired Functional Connectivity of the Thalamus in Alzheimer&amp;#8217; s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Zhou, Bo; Liu, Yong; Zhang, Zengqiang; An, Ning; Yao, Hongxiang; Wang, Pan; Wang, Luning; Zhang, Xi; Jiang, Tianzi

doi:10.2174/15672050113109990146

Cited by 110 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…However, there were no brain regions showing altered resting-state functional connectivity with the left thalamus as seed in the OCD patients. Previous researches found that the left and right brain regions with changed VMHC values showed different resting-state functional connectivity pattern [22], and the left and right thalamus may have diverse whole-brain functional connectivity patterns in Alzheimer's disease [45]. Based on the present research results, we infer that the left and right thalamus with changed VMHC values may also have different functional connectivity pattern at resting-state in OCD patients.…”

Section: Research Ping LIsupporting

confidence: 65%

Reduced Interhemispheric Resting-State Functional Homotopy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Wang¹,

Chen²,

Li³

et al. 2018

Neuropsychiatry

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Neuroimaging studies have shown structural and functional abnormalities in parts of the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) brain circuitry in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, little is known about changes in the interhemispheric functional homotopy in the resting-state in OCD. This study used a voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) approach combined with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate changes in interhemispheric functional homotopy in 60 OCD patients and 60 healthy controls. Compared with the healthy controls, the OCD patients showed decreased VMHC values in the thalamus. The results suggest that changes in functional homotopy in the CSTC circuitry may be involved in the pathophysiologic mechanism of OCD. Our findings provide new evidence of abnormalities in the CSTC circuitry in OCD.

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Section: Research Ping LIsupporting

confidence: 65%

Reduced Interhemispheric Resting-State Functional Homotopy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Wang¹,

Chen²,

Li³

et al. 2018

Neuropsychiatry

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“…Such overactivation patterns have been previously observed in MCI and have been associated with compensatory mechanisms against gray matter loss; for example in the hippocampus for memory (Dickerson et al, 2005a(Dickerson et al, , 2005bHämäläinen et al, 2007) and prefrontal cortex for verbal learning (Clément and Belleville, 2010). Interestingly, previous studies have shown volume reduction in thalamus (Chen and Herskovits, 2006;Karas et al, 2004;Pennanen et al, 2005) and abnormal resting state connectivity with other brain areas (Cai et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2012;Zhou et al, 2013) for MCI patients. Further, volume reductions in thalamus and putamen, have been shown to predict cognitive decline in ageing and conversion to Alzheimer′s disease (de Jong et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Learning temporal statistics for sensory predictions in mild cognitive impairment

et al. 2015

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Training is known to improve performance in a variety of perceptual and cognitive skills. However, there is accumulating evidence that mere exposure (i.e. without supervised training) to regularities (i.e. patterns that co-occur in the environment) facilitates our ability to learn contingencies that allow us to interpret the current scene and make predictions about future events. Recent neuroimaging studies have implicated fronto-striatal and medial temporal lobe brain regions in the learning of spatial and temporal statistics. Here, we ask whether patients with mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease (MCI-AD) that are characterized by hippocampal dysfunction are able to learn temporal regularities and predict upcoming events. We tested the ability of MCI-AD patients and age-matched controls to predict the orientation of a test stimulus following exposure to sequences of leftwards or rightwards orientated gratings. Our results demonstrate that exposure to temporal sequences without feedback facilitates the ability to predict an upcoming stimulus in both MCI-AD patients and controls. However, our fMRI results demonstrate that MCI-AD patients recruit an alternate circuit to hippocampus to succeed in learning of predictive structures. In particular, we observed stronger learning-dependent activations for structured sequences in frontal, subcortical and cerebellar regions for patients compared to age-matched controls. Thus, our findings suggest a cortico-striatal-cerebellar network that may mediate the ability for predictive learning despite hippocampal dysfunction in MCI-AD.

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“…Therefore, bilateral GM loss of thalamus characterizing our aMCI sample might account for impaired alpha connectivity between anterior and posterior regions of the brain, likely due to synaptic dysfunction or synaptic loss of thalamocortical neurons. This hypothesis is supported by studies showing amyloid deposits and neurofibrillary tangles in the thalamus of AD patients (Rudelli et al 1984;Masliah et al 1989;Braak and Braak 1991) together with significant GM loss (Karas et al 2004) that further correlated with impaired cognitive functioning (de Jong et al 2008), and by studies showing altered patterns of functional connectivity between thalamus and precuneus in aMCI subjects (Cantero et al 2009a;Wang et al 2012;Zhou et al 2013).…”

Section: Brain Struct Functmentioning

confidence: 82%

Cerebral and blood correlates of reduced functional connectivity in mild cognitive impairment

et al. 2014

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Growing evidence suggests that decreased functional connectivity in cortical networks precedes clinical stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), although our knowledge about cerebral and biological correlates of this phenomenon is limited. To shed light on this issue, we have investigated whether resting-state oscillatory connectivity patterns in healthy older (HO) and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) subjects are related to anatomical grey matter (GM) and functional (2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG)-PET) changes of neuroelectric sources of alpha rhythms, and/or to changes in plasma amyloid-beta (Aβ) and serum lipid levels, blood markers tied to AD pathogenesis and aging-related cognitive decline. We found that aMCI subjects showed decreased levels of cortical connectivity, reduced FDG-PET intake of the precuneus, and GM atrophy of the thalamus, together with higher levels of Aβ and apolipoprotein B (ApoB) compared to HO. Interestingly, levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol were positively correlated with the strength of neural-phase coupling in aMCI subjects, and increased triglycerides accompanied bilateral GM loss in the precuneus of aMCI subjects. Together, these findings provide peripheral blood correlates of reduced resting-state cortical connectivity in aMCI, supported by anatomo-functional changes in cerebral sources of alpha rhythms. This framework constitutes an integrated approach to assess functional changes in cortical networks through neuroimaging and peripheral blood markers during early stages of neurodegeneration.

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Impaired Functional Connectivity of the Thalamus in Alzheimer’ s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Abstract: Our results revealed disease severity-related alterations of the thalamo-default mode network and thalamocortical connectivity in AD and MCI patients. These results support the hypothesis of network disconnection in AD.

Cited by 110 publications

References 79 publications

Reduced Interhemispheric Resting-State Functional Homotopy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Reduced Interhemispheric Resting-State Functional Homotopy in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Learning temporal statistics for sensory predictions in mild cognitive impairment

Cerebral and blood correlates of reduced functional connectivity in mild cognitive impairment

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