Disrupted network topology in patients with stable and progressive mild cognitive impairment and alzheimer's disease

Date
2016
Authors
Pereira, J. B.
Mijalkov, M.
Kakaei, E.
Mecocci, P.
Vellas, B.
Tsolaki, M.
Kłoszewska, I.
Soininen, H.
Spenger, C.
Lovestone, S.
Editor(s)
Advisor
Supervisor
Co-Advisor
Co-Supervisor
Instructor
Source Title
Cerebral Cortex
Print ISSN
1047-3211
Electronic ISSN
1460-2199
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Volume
26
Issue
8
Pages
3476 - 3493
Language
English
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Series
Abstract

Recent findings suggest that Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a disconnection syndrome characterized by abnormalities in large-scale networks. However, the alterations that occur in network topology during the prodromal stages of AD, particularly in patients with stable mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and those that show a slow or faster progression to dementia, are still poorly understood. In this study, we used graph theory to assess the organization of structural MRI networks in stable MCI (sMCI) subjects, late MCI converters (lMCIc), early MCI converters (eMCIc), and AD patients from 2 large multicenter cohorts: ADNI and AddNeuroMed. Our findings showed an abnormal global network organization in all patient groups, as reflected by an increased path length, reduced transitivity, and increased modularity compared with controls. In addition, lMCIc, eMCIc, and AD patients showed a decreased path length and mean clustering compared with the sMCI group. At the local level, there were nodal clustering decreases mostly in AD patients, while the nodal closeness centrality detected abnormalities across all patient groups, showing overlapping changes in the hippocampi and amygdala and nonoverlapping changes in parietal, entorhinal, and orbitofrontal regions. These findings suggest that the prodromal and clinical stages of AD are associated with an abnormal network topology.

Course
Other identifiers
Book Title
Citation
Published Version (Please cite this version)