In:
Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, SAGE Publications, Vol. 41, No. 1 ( 2021-01), p. 105-115
Abstract:
Cerebral microinfarcts (CMIs), a novel cerebrovascular marker, are prevalent in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and associated with cognitive impairment. Nonetheless, the underlying mechanism of how CMIs influence cognition remains uncertain. We hypothesized that cortical-CMIs disrupted structural connectivity in the higher-order cognitive networks, leading to cognitive impairment. We analyzed diffusion-MRI data of 92 AD (26 with cortical-CMIs) and 110 cognitive impairment no dementia patients (CIND, 28 with cortical-CMIs). We compared structural network topology between groups with and without cortical-CMIs in AD/CIND, and tested whether structural connectivity mediated the association between cortical-CMIs and cognition. Cortical-CMIs correlated with impaired structural network topology (i.e. lower efficiency/degree centrality in the executive control/dorsal attention networks in CIND, and lower clustering coefficient in the default mode/dorsal attention networks in AD), which mediated the association of cortical-CMIs with visuoconstruction dysfunction. Our findings provide the first in vivo human evidence that cortical-CMIs impair cognition in elderly via disrupting structural connectivity.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0271-678X
,
1559-7016
DOI:
10.1177/0271678X20902187
Language:
English
Publisher:
SAGE Publications
Publication Date:
2021
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2039456-1