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The known regional abnormality of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and its role in various neural circuits in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has given prominence to its importance in studies on the disconnection associated with MCI. The purpose of the current study was to examine the DLPFC functional connectivity patterns during rest in MCI patients and the impact of regional grey matter (GM) atrophy on the functional results. Structural and functional MRI data were collected from 14 MCI patients and 14 age, gender-matched healthy controls. We found that both the bilateral DLPFC showed reduced functional connectivity with the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), superior/medial frontal gyrus and sub-cortical regions (e.g., thalamus, putamen) in MCI patients when compared with healthy controls. Moreover, the DLPFC connectivity with the IPL and thalamus significantly correlated with the cognitive performance of patients as measured by mini-mental state examination (MMSE), clock drawing test (CDT), and California verbal learning test (CVLT) scores. When taking GM atrophy as covariates, these results were approximately consistent with those without correction, although there may be a decrease in the statistical power. These results suggest that the DLPFC disconnections may be the substrates of cognitive impairments in MCI patients. In addition, we also found enhanced functional connectivity between the left DLPFC and the right prefrontal cortex in MCI patients. This is consistent with previous findings of MCI-related increased activation during cognitive tasks, and may represent a compensatory mechanism in MCI patients. Together, the present study demonstrated the coexistence of functional disconnection and compensation in MCI patients using DLPFC functional connectivity analysis, and thus might provide insights into biological mechanism of the disease.

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Our objective is to clarify the effects of acupuncture on hippocampal connectivity in patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty-eight right-handed subjects (14 AD patients and 14 healthy elders) participated in this study. Clinical and neuropsychological examinations were performed on all subjects. MRI was performed using a SIEMENS verio 3-Tesla scanner. The fMRI study used a single block experimental design. We first acquired baseline resting state data during the initial 3 minutes and then performed acupuncture stimulation on the Tai chong and He gu acupoints for 3 minutes. Last, we acquired fMRI data for another 10 minutes after the needle was withdrawn. The preprocessing and data analysis were performed using statistical parametric mapping (SPM5) software. Two-sample t-tests were performed using data from the two groups in different states. We found that during the resting state, several frontal and temporal regions showed decreased hippocampal connectivity in AD patients relative to control subjects. During the resting state following acupuncture, AD patients showed increased connectivity in most of these hippocampus related regions compared to the first resting state. In conclusion, we investigated the effect of acupuncture on AD patients by combing fMRI and traditional acupuncture. Our fMRI study confirmed that acupuncture at Tai chong and He gu can enhance the hippocampal connectivity in AD patients.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:The pathology of Parkinson disease leads to morphological brain volume changes. So far, the progressive gray matter volume change across time specific to patients with Parkinson disease compared controls remains unclear. Our aim was to investigate the pattern of gray matter changes in patients with Parkinson disease and to explore the progressive gray matter volume change specific to patients with Parkinson disease with disease progression by using voxel-based morphometry analysis.

Despite the known morphological differences (e.g., brain shape and size) in the brains of populations of different origins (e.g., age and race), the Chinese brain atlas is less studied. In the current study, we developed a statistical brain atlas based on a multi-center high quality magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) dataset of 2020 Chinese adults (18–76 years old). We constructed 12 Chinese brain atlas from the age 20 year to the age 75 at a 5 years interval. New Chinese brain standard space, coordinates, and brain area labels were further defined. The new Chinese brain atlas was validated in brain registration and segmentation. It was found that, as contrast to the MNI152 template, the proposed Chinese atlas showed higher accuracy in hippocampus segmentation and relatively smaller shape deformations during registration. These results indicate that a population-specific time varying brain atlas may be more appropriate for studies involving Chinese populations.