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. 2008 Nov;4(6):381-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.jalz.2008.07.001.

White matter integrity linked to functional impairments in aging and early Alzheimer's disease

Voyko Kavcic  1 , Hongyan Ni, Tong Zhu, Jianhui Zhong, Charles J Duffy
Affiliations

White matter integrity linked to functional impairments in aging and early Alzheimer's disease

Voyko Kavcic et al. Alzheimers Dement. 2008 Nov.

Abstract

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with changes in cerebral white matter (WM), but the functional significance of such findings is not yet established. We hypothesized that diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) might reveal links between regional WM changes and specific neuropsychologically and psychophysically defined impairments in early AD.

Methods: Older adult control subjects (OA, n = 18) and mildly impaired AD patients (n = 14) underwent neuropsychological and visual perceptual testing along with DTI of cerebral WM. DTI yielded factional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (D) maps for nine regions of interest in three brain regions that were then compared with the performance measures.

Results: AD patients exhibited nonsignificant trends toward lower FAs in the posterior region's callosal and subcortical regions of interest. However, posterior callosal FA was significantly correlated with verbal fluency and figural memory impairments, whereas posterior subcortical FA was correlated with delayed verbal memory, figural memory, and optic flow perceptual impairments.

Conclusions: WM changes in early AD are concentrated in posterior cerebral areas, with distributions that correspond to specific functional impairments. DTI can be used to assess regional pathology related to individual's deficits in early AD.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
ROIs for DTI. Middle: Sagittal T2s indicate genu-splenial plane (dashed) and anterior-posterior levels. Top: Coronal FA maps by fiber orientation: red, left-right; green, anterior-posterior; blue, dorsal-ventral. Bottom: Coronal T2s show anterior and posterior planes. (A=anterior, M=middle, P=posterior, CC=corpus callosum, Cin=cinglulum, SLF=superior longitudinal fasciculus.)
Figure 2
Figure 2
Visual dot motion for determining coherence thresholds: A. left/right horizontal motion, B. outward radial patterns with left or right focus of expansion, C. Interleaved inward and outward patterns with left or right center of motion. D. Visual motion perceptual thresholds from OA and AD subjects.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Fractional anisotropy measures for nine ROIs in OA and AD subjects. Mean + S.E.M. (ordinate) for each ROI (abscissa) for older adults (OA) (open bar) and AD patients (filled bar).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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