Gerrits Niels J H M, van Loenhoud Anita C, van den Berg Stan F, Berendse Henk W, Foncke Elisabeth M J, Klein Martin, Stoffers Diederick, van der Werf Ysbrand D, van den Heuvel Odile A
Department of Anatomy & Neurosciences, VU University medical center (VUmc), Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam (NCA), Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2016 Feb 26;11(2):e0148852. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0148852. eCollection 2016.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is often associated with cognitive deficits, although their severity varies considerably between patients. Recently, we used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to show that individual differences in gray matter (GM) volume relate to cognitive heterogeneity in PD. VBM does, however, not differentiate between cortical thickness (CTh) and surface area (SA), which might be independently affected in PD. We therefore re-analyzed our cohort using the surface-based method FreeSurfer, and investigated (i) CTh, SA, and (sub)cortical GM volume differences between 93 PD patients and 45 matched controls, and (ii) the relation between these structural measures and cognitive performance on six neuropsychological tasks within the PD group. We found cortical thinning in PD patients in the left pericalcarine gyrus, extending to cuneus, precuneus and lingual areas and left inferior parietal cortex, bilateral rostral middle frontal cortex, and right cuneus, and increased cortical surface area in the left pars triangularis. Within the PD group, we found negative correlations between (i) CTh of occipital areas and performance on a verbal memory task, (ii) SA and volume of the frontal cortex and visuospatial memory performance, and, (iii) volume of the right thalamus and scores on two verbal fluency tasks. Our primary findings illustrate that i) CTh and SA are differentially affected in PD, and ii) VBM and FreeSurfer yield non-overlapping results in an identical dataset. We argue that this discrepancy is due to technical differences and the subtlety of the PD-related structural changes.
帕金森病（PD）常伴有认知缺陷，尽管患者之间其严重程度差异很大。最近，我们使用基于体素的形态测量法（VBM）表明，灰质（GM）体积的个体差异与PD患者的认知异质性有关。然而，VBM无法区分皮质厚度（CTh）和表面积（SA），而这两者在PD中可能受到独立影响。因此，我们使用基于表面的FreeSurfer方法重新分析了我们的队列，并研究了：（i）93例PD患者和45例匹配对照之间的CTh、SA和（亚）皮质GM体积差异；（ii）PD组内这些结构测量与六项神经心理学任务的认知表现之间的关系。我们发现，PD患者左侧距状周回皮质变薄，延伸至楔叶、楔前叶和舌回区域以及左侧顶下小叶皮质、双侧额中回前部皮质和右侧楔叶，且左侧三角部皮质表面积增加。在PD组内，我们发现：（i）枕叶区域的CTh与言语记忆任务表现之间呈负相关；（ii）额叶皮质的SA和体积与视觉空间记忆表现之间呈负相关；（iii）右侧丘脑体积与两项言语流畅性任务的得分之间呈负相关。我们的主要发现表明：（i）CTh和SA在PD中受到不同影响；（ii）在同一数据集中，VBM和FreeSurfer产生了不重叠的结果。我们认为这种差异是由于技术差异以及PD相关结构变化的细微性所致。
