Reaction Time Is Negatively Associated with Corpus Callosum Area in the Early Stages of CADASIL

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Reaction time was recently recognized as a marker of subtle cognitive and behavioral alterations in the early clinical stages of CADASIL, a monogenic cerebral small-vessel disease. In unselected patients with CADASIL, brain atrophy and lacunes are the main imaging correlates of disease severity, but MR imaging correlates of reaction time in mildly affected patients are unknown. We hypothesized that reaction time is independently associated with the corpus callosum area in the early clinical stages of CADASIL.

Brain atrophy in cerebral small vessel diseases: Extent, consequences, technical limitations and perspectives: The HARNESS initiative

“…In contrast, the two studies in CADASIL patients did not find lower brain volumes compared to controls. 29,30 To note, in this cohort, patients were younger (mean age 53) and were free of cognitive impairment.…”

“…Brain atrophy in SVD patients compared to controls (Table 2) We found only two studies in sporadic SVD 27,28 (from the same group) and two in CADASIL (based on the same small cohort) that compared brain volumes in patients with SVD to age-and sex-matched controls (Table 1). 29,30 Patients with sporadic SVD were included if they had a clinical lacunar stroke syndrome with a corresponding subcortical ischemic lesion on MRI as well as confluent WMH. 27,28 Both cross-sectional and longitudinal measures were reported in one study.…”

“…In three out of four studies, lesion filling was used to avoid misclassification of severe WMH into CSF. 27,29,30 For instance, WMH masks determined on FLAIR images were pasted with the signal of normal white matter over 3DT1 images before segmentation in two studies. 29,30 Cross-sectional studies reported lower brain volumes (of about 3%, p < 0.005 and p ¼ 0.02) in the sporadic SVD group.…”

“…27,29,30 For instance, WMH masks determined on FLAIR images were pasted with the signal of normal white matter over 3DT1 images before segmentation in two studies. 29,30 Cross-sectional studies reported lower brain volumes (of about 3%, p < 0.005 and p ¼ 0.02) in the sporadic SVD group. 27,28 In addition, the unique longitudinal study also showed higher brain atrophy in 26 sporadic SVD patients (0.91% per year vs. 0.5%, p ¼ 0.02).…”

Comparison of Manual Cross-Sectional Measurements and Automatic Volumetry of the Corpus Callosum, and Their Clinical Impact: A Study on Type 1 Diabetes and Healthy Controls

“…Callosal atrophy has been observed in diseases with white matter lesions secondary to cerebral small vessel disease, such as vascular dementia and CADASIL (24). Future studies will tell whether the changes observed in our study will translate into cognitive impairment.…”