Journal
NEUROIMAGE
Volume 59, Issue 2, Pages 1429-1440Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.08.049
Keywords
Regional Homogeneity; Resting state; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Alzheimer's disease; Mild cognitive impairment
Funding
- Natural Science Foundation of China [60831004, 30900476]
- National Basic Research Program of China (973 program) [2011CBA00408]
- National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) [2009AA02Z302]
- International Cooperation and Exchanges Projects [2009DFB10500]
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Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most prevalent cause of dementia in the elderly, is characterized by progressive cognitive and intellectual deficits. Most patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are thought to be in a very early stage of AD. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging reflects spontaneous brain activities and/or the endogenous/background neurophysiological process of the human brain. Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) can provide a fast method for mapping regional activity across the whole brain. Little has been previously published about where or how spontaneous activity differs between MCI and AD, although many previous fMRI studies have shown that the activity pattern is altered in MCI/AD. In the present study, we first used the ReHo method to explore differences in regional spontaneous activities throughout the whole brain between normal controls (NC) and people with MCI and with AD. A one-way ANOVA was performed to determine the regions in which the ReHo differs between the three groups, and then a post hoc analysis was performed to evaluate differences in the pattern among the three groups. Finally a correlation analysis was clone between the ReHo index of these regions and clinical variables in order to evaluate the relationship between ReHo and cognitive measures in the AD and MCI groups. An exploratory classification analysis also demonstrated that ReHo measures were able to correctly separate subjects in 71.4% of the cases. Altered brain spontaneous activations were found in the medial prefrontal cortex, the bilateral posterior cingulate gyrus/precuneus and the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in both MCI and AD. In MCI, the ReHo index in the left IPL was higher than that of the NC, which could indicate the presence of a compensatory mechanism in MCI. More obviously, the correlation analysis indicated that the lower the memory and other cognitive abilities, the lower the ReHo in patients with MCI and AD. Combining our findings with the results in earlier studies, we propose that the spontaneous activity pattern in the resting state could potentially be used as a clinical marker for MCI/AD. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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