Individual-specific functional connectivity improves prediction of Alzheimer’s disease’s symptoms in elderly people regardless of APOE ε4 genotype

Abstract

To date, reliable biomarkers remain unclear that could link functional connectivity to patients’ symptoms for detecting and predicting the process from normal aging to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in elderly people with specific genotypes. To address this, individual-specific functional connectivity is constructed for elderly participants with/without APOE ε4 allele. Then, we utilize recursive feature selection-based machine learning to reveal individual brain-behavior relationships and to predict the symptom transition in different genotypes. Our findings reveal that compared with conventional atlas-based functional connectivity, individual-specific functional connectivity exhibits higher classification and prediction performance from normal aging to AD in both APOE ε4 groups, while no significant performance is detected when the data of two genotyping groups are combined. Furthermore, individual-specific between-network connectivity constitutes a major contributor to assessing cognitive symptoms. This study highlights the essential role of individual variation in cortical functional anatomy and the integration of brain and behavior in predicting individualized symptoms.

Sleep–wake behavior, perceived fatigability, and cognitive reserve in older adults

“…In contrast, there is a paucity of data in the literature that addresses the impact of fatigability on CogAb when performing day‐to‐day activities in AD. As illustrated in Figure 3 , future studies are needed to investigate the central mechanisms and pathways linking clinical manifestations of sleep–wake behavior, fatigability, and CogAb to altered brain structures (eg, white matter hyperintensities and function, impaired neural connectivity) 47 through AD biomarkers, including increased proinflammatory cytokines, 32 which are beyond the scope of the present study. Further studies on the concept of AD‐related fatigue are warranted.…”