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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 11|pp 15491—15500

Altered brain network centrality in patients with mild cognitive impairment: an fMRI study using a voxel-wise degree centrality approach

Jing Xiong1, Chao Yu1, Ting Su2,3, Qian-Min Ge1, Wen-Qing Shi1, Li-Ying Tang2, Hui-Ye Shu1, Yi-Cong Pan1, Rong-Bin Liang1, Qiu-Yu Li1, Yi Shao1
  • 1Department of Ophthalmology and Geriatric Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Jiangxi Center of Natural Ocular Disease Clinical Research Center, Nanchang 330006, Jiangxi, China
  • 2Eye Institute of Xiamen University, School of Medicine, Xiamen University, Department of Ophthalmology, Zhongshan Hospital, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China
  • 3Department of Ophthalmology, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA
* Equal contribution
Received: January 9, 2021Accepted: May 14, 2021Published: June 9, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203105

Copyright: © 2021 Xiong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Purpose: Previous studies in patients with Alzheimer’s disease have shown amyloid beta accumulation in the brain and abnormal brain activity, with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in early stages of the disease. The aim of the current study was to investigate functional connectivity in patients with MCI.

Methods: We recruited 24 subjects in total, including 12 patients with MCI (6 men and 6 women) and 12 healthy controls (HCs) (6 men and 6 women), matched for age, gender, and lifestyle factors. All subjects underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans and voxel-wise degree centrality (DC) was used to evaluate alterations in the strength of brain network connectivity.

Results: The DC value of the left inferior temporal gyrus was lower in MCI but significantly higher in the right fusiform gyrus and the left supplementary motor area, compared with HCs. The DC value in left inferior temporal gyrus correlated positively with disease duration and negatively with Mini-Mental State Examination. ROC curve analysis of brain regions showed acceptable specificity and accuracy of DC values between MCIs and HCs in the area under the curve (right fusiform gyrus, 0.955; left supplementary motor area, 0.992; left inferior temporal gyrus, 1.000).

Conclusions: Abnormal functional connectivity in brain regions of patients with MCI may reflect the pathological process of Alzheimer’s disease development and could prove useful in clinical diagnosis and treatment.