Liu Xiaozheng, Chen Wei, Tu Yunhai, Hou Hongtao, Huang Xiaoyan, Chen Xingli, Guo Zhongwei, Bai Guanghui, Chen Wei
China-USA Neuroimaging Research Institute, Department of Radiology of the Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2018 Feb 13;10:37. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2018.00037. eCollection 2018.
Hypothalamic communication with the rest of the brain is critical for accomplishing a wide variety of physiological and psychological functions, including the maintenance of neuroendocrine circadian rhythms and the management of affective processes. Evidence has shown that major depressive disorder (MDD) patients exhibit increased functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Neurofibrillary tangles are also found in the hypothalamus of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, and AD patients exhibit abnormal changes in the HPA. However, little is known of how the hypothalamus interacts with other brain regions in AD patients with depression (D-AD). Functional connectivity (FC) analysis explores the connectivity between brain regions that share functional properties. Here, we used resting-state (rs) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology and the FC method to measure hypothalamic connectivity across the whole brain in 22 D-AD patients and 21 non-depressed AD patients (nD-AD). Our results showed that D-AD patients had reduced FC among the hypothalamus, the right middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) compared with the FC of nD-AD patients, suggesting that the abnormal FC between the hypothalamus and the temporal lobe may play a key role in the pathophysiology of depression in AD patients.
下丘脑与大脑其他部分之间的交流对于实现多种生理和心理功能至关重要，包括维持神经内分泌昼夜节律以及管理情感过程。有证据表明，重度抑郁症（MDD）患者的下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴功能增强。在阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者的下丘脑中也发现了神经原纤维缠结，并且AD患者的HPA出现异常变化。然而，对于患有抑郁症的AD患者（D-AD）下丘脑如何与其他脑区相互作用知之甚少。功能连接（FC）分析探索具有功能特性的脑区之间的连接性。在此，我们使用静息态（rs）磁共振成像（MRI）技术和FC方法，测量了22例D-AD患者和21例非抑郁AD患者（nD-AD）全脑的下丘脑连接性。我们的结果表明，与nD-AD患者的FC相比，D-AD患者下丘脑、右侧颞中回（MTG）和右侧颞上回（STG）之间的FC降低，这表明下丘脑与颞叶之间的FC异常可能在AD患者抑郁症的病理生理学中起关键作用。
