Neuroanatomical correlates of apathy and disinhibition, behavioural abnormalities in behavioral variant Frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) remains unclear. In this study 45 participants (25 bvFTD patients and 20 controls) provided data on clinical, neuropsychological, behavioural (on Frontal Systems Behaviour (FrSBe) Scale), cortical volume (on voxel-based morphometry (VBM)) and tract based spatial fractional anisotropy ((FA) on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowing examination of the neural correlates of apathy and disinhibition. The patients with bvFTD had predominant grey matter loss and corresponding white matter fractional anisotropy reductions in the frontal and temporal lobe compared to the controls. Grey matter loss in frontal, temporal and limbic structures correlated with apathy and degeneration in temporal limbic brain areas correlated with disinhibition. FA changes in inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and forceps minor correlated with apathy and fibre integrity changes in the superior longitudinal fasciculus
BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Brain iron deposition has been implicated as a major culprit in the pathophysiology of neurodegeneration. However, the quantitative assessment of iron in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia brains has not been performed, to our knowledge. The aim of our study was to investigate the characteristic iron levels in the frontotemporal dementia subtypes using susceptibility-weighted imaging and report its association with behavioral profiles.
Fractal dimension (FD) is a quantitative parameter that can characterizes the complexity of human brain tissue. Extensive grey matter (GM) pathology has been previously identified in Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and its variants. The aim of the present study was to investigate the GM morphometric abnormalities in the behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD) and primary progressive aphasia (PPA) using FD analysis. Twenty-seven bvFTD, 12 PPA and 20 controls were studied. SPM8 was used to segment the brain into GM tissue. Then the FD values were estimated for the GM skeleton, surface and general structure in patients and controls using our previously published algorithm. We found that patients with bvFTD had significant reduction in FD values of skeleton and general structure when compared to controls. In PPA, more significant decrease in FD was noted in the whole brain and left hemisphere skeleton along with left hemisphere general structure. Only the right hemisphere skeleton had a significant correlation with total score of Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (FrSBe). The results showed that the variants of FTD are associated with disease specific morphometric complexity patterns. These results indicate that FD can be used as a biomarker for the structural changes associated with neurodegenerative diseases.
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by focal grey matter atrophy of orbitomesial frontal and anterior temporal regions. The overlapping nature of behavioral changes in this young onset dementia makes it difficult to differentiate from other forms of dementia such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Neuroimaging analysis especially Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) plays a vital role in the differential diagnosis of this dread demending disease. Automatic segmentation of brain MR images helps in the quantification of atrophy rate longitudinally. Fuzzy c means algorithm (FCM) is an unsupervised algorithm, have been widely used in automated image segmentation. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of FCM technique for the longitudinal analysis of cerebral atrophy in FTD subjects compared with normal controls. We showed that the analysis was effective in the quantification of structural brain changes overtime and could serve as predictive marker of impending behavioural changes in FTD.
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