Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 16|pp 16183—16194

Differential functional dysconnectivity of caudate nucleus subdivisions in Parkinson’s disease

Xiuqin Jia¹, Zhenyu Pan¹, Huimin Chen^2,^3,⁴, Zhijiang Wang^5,^6,⁷, Kun Li¹, Xuemei Wang^2,^3,⁴, Zhan Wang^2,^3,⁴, Huizi Ma^2,^3,⁴, Tao Feng^2,^3,⁴, Qi Yang¹

¹Department of Radiology, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
²Department of Movement Disorders, Center for Neurology, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
³China National Clinical Research Center for Neurological Diseases, Beijing, China
⁴Parkinson's Disease Center, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
⁵Peking University Sixth Hospital (Institute of Mental Health), Beijing, China
⁶NHC Key Laboratory of Mental Health (Peking University), Beijing, China
⁷National Clinical Research Centerfor Mental Disorders (Peking University Sixth Hospital), Beijing, China

* Equal contribution

Received: April 3, 2020Accepted: June 18, 2020Published: July 19, 2020

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103628

Copyright © 2020 Jia et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Caudate dopaminergic dysfunction is implied in the pathophysiology of patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Still, connectivity specificities of the caudate nucleus (CN) subdivisions and the effect of dopamine are poorly understood. We collected MRI and neuropsychological data from 34 PD patients and 26 age- and sex-matched healthy elderly individuals (HEs) in this study. Resting-state functional connectivity analysis revealed that compared to the other CN subdivisions, the CN head was more strongly connected to the default mode network (DMN), the CN body to the frontoparietal network (FPN), and the CN tail to the visual network in HEs. PD patients off medication showed reduced connectivity within all these subdivision networks. In PD patients on medication, functional connectivity in the CN head network was significantly improved in the medial prefrontal cortex and in the body network it was improved in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These improvements contributed to ameliorated motivation and cognitive function in PD patients. Our results highlighted the specific alterations and dopamine modulation in these CN subdivision networks in PD, which may provide insight into the pathophysiology and therapeutics of this disease.