Convergent regional brain abnormalities in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia: A neuroimaging meta‐analysis of 73 studies

Abstract

Introduction Numerous studies have reported brain alterations in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). However, they pointed to inconsistent findings. Methods We used a meta‐analytic approach to identify the convergent structural and functional brain abnormalities in bvFTD. Following current best‐practice neuroimaging meta‐analysis guidelines, we searched PubMed and Embase databases and performed reference tracking. Then, the coordinates of group comparisons between bvFTD and controls from 73 studies were extracted and tested for convergence using activation likelihood estimation. Results We identified convergent abnormalities in the anterior cingulate cortices, anterior insula, amygdala, paracingulate, striatum, and hippocampus. Task‐based and resting‐state functional connectivity pointed to the networks that are connected to the obtained consistent regions. Functional decoding analyses suggested associated dysfunction of emotional processing, interoception, reward processing, higher‐order cognitive functions, and olfactory and gustatory perceptions in bvFTD. Discussion Our findings highlighted the key role of the salience network and subcortical regions in the pathophysiology of bvFTD.

A predictive coding framework of allostatic–interoceptive overload in frontotemporal dementia

“…early in bvFTD [71][72][73] (Figure 2C). Usually, patients with bvFTD show aberrant connectivity [74][75][76][77][78][79] of the salience [80][81][82] and the default mode networks [78], which supports the involvement of the AIN [4,74].…”

“…Thus, neuroanatomical evidence suggests a direct impairment of anatomical and functional AIN connectivity in bvFTD. Importantly, brain regions other than those involved in allostatic-interoceptive processes are also impaired in this disease (e.g., paracingulate gyrus) [73]. Nevertheless, allostatic-interoceptive brain hubs, such as the anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and amygdala, seem critical for multiple manifestations in bvFTD.…”

Functional connectivity in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

“…Although a meta‐analysis would be desirable, methodological heterogeneity and an intrinsic impossibility of reporting the results using standardized coordinates are obstacles. For instance, a meta‐analysis of neuroimaging in bvFTD (Kamalian et al., 2022 ) could only include three studies using resting‐state fMRI‐based FC (Caminiti et al., 2015 ; Rytty et al., 2013 ; Tuovinen et al., 2017 ).…”

Extended functional connectivity of convergent structural alterations among individuals with PTSD: a neuroimaging meta-analysis

“…Second, we identified the task-free resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) patterns, as well as the task-based meta-analytic co-activation modeling (MACM) patterns of convergent regions, thus providing multimodal functional connectivity profiles for each. Together, the VBM, rsFC, and MACM meta-analytic approaches have been used in previous clinically related meta-analyses [ 16 , 37 , 71 ], they provide complementary information, yielding a multimodal functional connectivity profile for a given region of interest. Lastly, we applied meta-analytic functional decoding methods to identify the mental processes linked to this functional connectivity profile.…”