Bioinformatics Programming Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, School of Biosciences and Technology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India.
Int J Neurosci. 2021 Feb;131(2):105-115. doi: 10.1080/00207454.2020.1733559. Epub 2020 Mar 3.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder which resists around 10 million people worldwide. It develops when nerve cells in a region of the brain that regulates movement become damaged; the symptoms usually begin gradually and become critical over time. In this study, we proposed to investigate the topological properties of functional brain networks within healthy controls (HCs) and PD patients. Also, we evaluated the gender difference among PD patients through graph theoretical approach.
The rs-fMRI (resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging) data of fifty-one PD patients and healthy controls was applied to generate the brain functional connectome. The functional whole-brain connectome was constructed by thresholding partial correlation matrices of 160 regions from Dosenbach brain atlas. From the graph theory approach, global and nodal metrics were analysed, and we observed considerable changes in PD patients in comparison with healthy controls.
Findings suggest that there is a significant difference in the topological characteristics of PD patients, and this was found to be evident in the default mode network (DMN) and occipital regions.
This study provides essential insights from network changes to the clinically relevant information for the PD progression.
帕金森病（PD）是第二常见的神经退行性疾病，全球约有 1000 万人患有这种疾病。当大脑中控制运动的区域的神经细胞受损时，就会发生这种疾病；症状通常会逐渐出现，并随着时间的推移而变得严重。在这项研究中，我们拟研究健康对照组（HCs）和 PD 患者的大脑功能网络的拓扑性质。此外，我们还通过图论方法评估了 PD 患者的性别差异。
对 51 名 PD 患者和健康对照组的 rs-fMRI（静息态功能磁共振成像）数据进行了应用，以生成脑功能连接组。通过 Dosenbach 脑图谱的 160 个区域的部分相关矩阵来构建功能全脑连接组。从图论方法分析了全局和节点指标，我们观察到 PD 患者与健康对照组相比存在明显的拓扑特征变化。
研究结果表明，PD 患者的拓扑特征存在显著差异，这在默认模式网络（DMN）和枕叶区域表现得尤为明显。
这项研究从网络变化的角度为 PD 进展的临床相关信息提供了重要的见解。
