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. 2015 Nov 25;10(11):e0142445.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0142445. eCollection 2015.

White Matter Changes Associated with Resting Sympathetic Tone in Frontotemporal Dementia vs. Alzheimer's Disease

Mario F Mendez  1   2 , Simantini J Karve  1 , Madelaine Daianu  1 , Elvira Jimenez  1 , Paul Thompson  3   4   5   6   6
Affiliations

White Matter Changes Associated with Resting Sympathetic Tone in Frontotemporal Dementia vs. Alzheimer's Disease

Mario F Mendez et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Resting sympathetic tone, a measure of physiological arousal, is decreased in patients with apathy and inertia, such as those with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and other frontally-predominant disorders.

Objective: To identify the neuroanatomical correlates of skin conductance levels (SCLs), an index of resting sympathetic tone and apathy, among patients with bvFTD, where SCLs is decreased, compared to those with Alzheimer's disease (AD), where it is not.

Methods: This study analyzed bvFTD (n = 14) patients and a comparison group with early-onset AD (n = 19). We compared their resting SCLs with gray matter and white matter regions of interest and white matter measures of fiber integrity on magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging.

Results: As expected, bvFTD patients, compared to AD patients, had lower SCLs, which correlated with an apathy measure, and more gray matter loss and abnormalities of fiber integrity (fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity) in frontal-anterior temporal regions. After controlling for group membership, the SCLs were significantly correlated with white matter volumes in the cingulum and inferior parietal region in the right hemisphere.

Conclusion: Among dementia patients, SCLs, and resting sympathetic tone, may correlate with quantity of white matter, rather than with gray matter or with white matter fiber integrity. Loss of white matter volumes, especially involving a right frontoparietal network, may reflect chronic loss of cortical axons that mediate frontal control of resting sympathetic tone, changes that could contribute to the apathy and inertia of bvFTD and related disorders.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Box plot of Skin Conductance Levels (SCLs) in bvFTD and AD.
The dark lines are the means and the boxes and bars indicate interquartile ranges.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Significant positive correlations of SCLs with white matter (WM) volumes.
The 33 bvFTD and AD subjects underwent partial correlations (age, gender, diagnosis) of the SCLs with frontoparietal WM ROIs. R = right; L = left.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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