Zhao Chongyi, Chen Meiling, Ding Zhiyong, Liu Chunyan, Wu Xiaomei
Faculty of Life Science and Technology, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China.
Department of Gynecology, The First People's Hospital of Yunnan Province, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2022 Oct 13;14:1009632. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.1009632. eCollection 2022.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder causing dementia in the elderly population. Functional disconnection of brain is considered to be the main cause of AD. In this study, we applied a newly developed association (Asso) mapping approach to directly quantify the functional disconnections and to explore the diagnostic effects for AD with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 36 AD patients and 42 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy controls (HC). We found that AD patients showed decreased Asso in left dorsoanterior insula (INS) while increased functional connections of INS with right medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and left posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). The changed Asso and functional connections were closely associated with cognitive performances. In addition, the reduced Asso and increased functional connections could serve as effective neuromarkers to distinguish AD patients from HC. Our research provided new evidence for functional disconnections in AD and demonstrated that functional disconnections between cognition-memory networks may be potential early biomarkers for AD.
阿尔茨海默病（AD）是一种常见的神经退行性疾病，可导致老年人群痴呆。大脑功能连接中断被认为是AD的主要病因。在本研究中，我们应用一种新开发的关联（Asso）映射方法，直接量化功能连接中断，并利用36例AD患者和42例年龄、性别和教育程度匹配的健康对照（HC）的静息态功能磁共振成像数据，探索其对AD的诊断作用。我们发现，AD患者左侧背侧前岛叶（INS）的Asso降低，而INS与右侧内侧前额叶皮质（MPFC）和左侧后扣带回皮质（PCC）的功能连接增加。Asso和功能连接的改变与认知表现密切相关。此外，Asso降低和功能连接增加可作为区分AD患者和HC的有效神经标志物。我们的研究为AD中的功能连接中断提供了新证据，并表明认知-记忆网络之间的功能连接中断可能是AD潜在的早期生物标志物。
