Langen Carolyn D, Zonneveld Hazel I, White Tonya, Huizinga Wyke, Cremers Lotte G M, de Groot Marius, Ikram Mohammad Arfan, Niessen Wiro J, Vernooij Meike W
Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Erasmus MC - University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Department of Medical Informatics, Erasmus MC - University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Erasmus MC - University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus MC - University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Neurobiol Aging. 2017 Mar;51:97-103. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2016.12.004. Epub 2016 Dec 14.
White matter lesions play a role in cognitive decline and dementia. One presumed pathway is through disconnection of functional networks. Little is known about location-specific effects of lesions on functional connectivity. This study examined location-specific effects within anatomically-defined white matter tracts in 1584 participants of the Rotterdam Study, aged 50-95. Tracts were delineated from diffusion magnetic resonance images using probabilistic tractography. Lesions were segmented on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images. Functional connectivity was defined across each tract on resting-state functional magnetic resonance images by using gray matter parcellations corresponding to the tract ends and calculating the correlation of the mean functional activity between the gray matter regions. A significant relationship between both local and brain-wide lesion load and tract-specific functional connectivity was found in several tracts using linear regressions, also after Bonferroni correction. Indirect connectivity analyses revealed that tract-specific functional connectivity is affected by lesions in several tracts simultaneously. These results suggest that local white matter lesions can decrease tract-specific functional connectivity, both in direct and indirect connections.
白质病变在认知衰退和痴呆中起作用。一种推测的途径是通过功能网络的断开连接。关于病变对功能连接的位置特异性影响知之甚少。本研究在鹿特丹研究的1584名年龄在50 - 95岁的参与者中，检查了解剖学定义的白质束内的位置特异性影响。使用概率纤维束成像从扩散磁共振图像中描绘出纤维束。在液体衰减反转恢复图像上分割病变。通过使用与纤维束末端对应的灰质分割，并计算灰质区域之间平均功能活动的相关性，在静息态功能磁共振图像上定义每个纤维束的功能连接。使用线性回归，在进行Bonferroni校正后，在几个纤维束中发现局部和全脑病变负荷与纤维束特异性功能连接之间存在显著关系。间接连接分析表明，纤维束特异性功能连接同时受到几个纤维束中病变的影响。这些结果表明，局部白质病变可降低直接和间接连接中纤维束特异性功能连接。
