1. White matter lesions relate to tract-specific reductions in functional connectivity
- Author
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Lotte G.M. Cremers, Marius de Groot, Wiro J. Niessen, Hazel I. Zonneveld, Carolyn D. Langen, Wyke Huizinga, Tonya White, Meike W. Vernooij, Mohammad Arfan Ikram, Medical Informatics, Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, Epidemiology, and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry / Psychology
- Subjects
Male ,Aging ,030218 nuclear medicine & medical imaging ,Functional networks ,Lesion load ,White matter ,03 medical and health sciences ,symbols.namesake ,0302 clinical medicine ,medicine ,Humans ,Cognitive decline ,Gray Matter ,Aged ,Aged, 80 and over ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,General Neuroscience ,Functional connectivity ,Magnetic resonance imaging ,Middle Aged ,Magnetic Resonance Imaging ,White Matter ,Hyperintensity ,Bonferroni correction ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging ,symbols ,Dementia ,Female ,Neurology (clinical) ,Geriatrics and Gerontology ,Psychology ,Cognition Disorders ,Neuroscience ,030217 neurology & neurosurgery ,Developmental Biology - Abstract
White matter lesions play a role in cognitive decline and dementia. One presumed pathway is through disconnection of functional networks. Little is known about location-specific effects of lesions on functional connectivity. This study examined location-specific effects within anatomically-defined white matter tracts in 1584 participants of the Rotterdam Study, aged 50–95. Tracts were delineated from diffusion magnetic resonance images using probabilistic tractography. Lesions were segmented on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images. Functional connectivity was defined across each tract on resting-state functional magnetic resonance images by using gray matter parcellations corresponding to the tract ends and calculating the correlation of the mean functional activity between the gray matter regions. A significant relationship between both local and brain-wide lesion load and tract-specific functional connectivity was found in several tracts using linear regressions, also after Bonferroni correction. Indirect connectivity analyses revealed that tract-specific functional connectivity is affected by lesions in several tracts simultaneously. These results suggest that local white matter lesions can decrease tract-specific functional connectivity, both in direct and indirect connections.
- Published
- 2017