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White matter integrity linked to functional impairments in aging and early Alzheimer's disease
Author(s) -
Kavcic Voyko,
Ni Hongyan,
Zhu Tong,
Zhong Jianhui,
Duffy Charles J.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2008.07.001
Subject(s) - white matter , fractional anisotropy , psychology , diffusion mri , neuroscience , audiology , neuropsychology , corpus callosum , posterior cortical atrophy , disease , medicine , dementia , cognition , pathology , magnetic resonance imaging , radiology
Background Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with changes in cerebral white matter (WM), but the functional significance of such findings is not yet established. We hypothesized that diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) might reveal links between regional WM changes and specific neuropsychologically and psychophysically defined impairments in early AD. Methods Older adult control subjects (OA, n = 18) and mildly impaired AD patients (n = 14) underwent neuropsychological and visual perceptual testing along with DTI of cerebral WM. DTI yielded factional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (〈D〉) maps for nine regions of interest in three brain regions that were then compared with the performance measures. Results AD patients exhibited nonsignificant trends toward lower FAs in the posterior region's callosal and subcortical regions of interest. However, posterior callosal FA was significantly correlated with verbal fluency and figural memory impairments, whereas posterior subcortical FA was correlated with delayed verbal memory, figural memory, and optic flow perceptual impairments. Conclusions WM changes in early AD are concentrated in posterior cerebral areas, with distributions that correspond to specific functional impairments. DTI can be used to assess regional pathology related to individual's deficits in early AD.