Frequency specific brain networks in Parkinson’s disease and comorbid depression

Abstract

The topological organization underlying the human brain was extensively investigated using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging, focusing on a low frequency of signal oscillation from 0.01 to 0.1 Hz. However, the frequency specificities with regard to the topological properties of the brain networks have not been fully revealed. In this study, a novel complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMD) method was used to separate the fMRI time series into five characteristic oscillations with distinct frequencies. Then, the small world properties of brain networks were analyzed for each of these five oscillations in patients (n = 67) with depressed Parkinson’s disease (DPD, n = 20) , non-depressed Parkinson’s disease (NDPD, n = 47) and healthy controls (HC, n = 46). Compared with HC, the results showed decreased network efficiency in characteristic oscillations from 0.05 to 0.12 Hz and from 0.02 to 0.05 Hz for the DPD and NDPD patients, respectively. Furthermore, compared with HC, the most significant inter-group difference across five brain oscillations was found in the basal ganglia (0.01 to 0.05 Hz) and paralimbic-limbic network (0.02 to 0.22 Hz) for the DPD patients, and in the visual cortex (0.02 to 0.05 Hz) for the NDPD patients. Compared with NDPD, the DPD patients showed reduced efficiency of nodes in the basal ganglia network (0.01 to 0.05 Hz). Our results demonstrated that DPD is characterized by a disrupted topological organization in large-scale brain functional networks. Moreover, the CEEMD analysis suggested a prominent dissociation in the topological organization of brain networks between DPD and NDPD in both space and frequency domains. Our findings indicated that these characteristic oscillatory activities in different functional circuits may contribute to distinct motor and non-motor components of clinical impairments in Parkinson’s disease.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11682-016-9514-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Structural Brain Network Alteration and its Correlation With Structural Impairments in Patients With Depression in de novo and Drug-Naïve Parkinson's Disease

“…Increased characteristic path length and reduced global efficiency, as observed in the d-PD patients in our study, reflect breakdown of network integration. Similarly, one functional MRI (fMRI) study revealed an increased characteristic path length of the functional network in d-PD patients compared with that in healthy individuals in specific frequencies of signal oscillation ( 18 ). Integration of the structural brain network refers to specific information transmission and exchange between distributed areas ( 19 ).…”

Frequency-Specific Functional Connectivity Density as an Effective Biomarker for Adolescent Generalized Anxiety Disorder

“…(3) Compute the HWF of each IMF with all data points. The detailed computing steps can be found in literature ( Qian et al, 2016 ). Then we calculated all HWFs corresponding to IMFs in the whole brain gray matter across all participants and obtained the HWF distribution histograms in each group.…”

“…Specifically, the activities in slow-5 were more active on cortical structures, whereas activities in slow-4 decreased in the subcortical structures, suggesting that the spontaneous brain activities were frequency-dependent ( Zuo et al, 2010 ). Additionally, frequency-specific changes of SFBO have also been found in several psychiatric and neurological diseases, such as depression ( Wang L. et al, 2016 ), social anxiety disorder ( Zhang et al, 2015 ), epilepsy ( Wang et al, 2015 ), Parkinson’s disease ( Qian et al, 2016 ), mild cognitive impairment ( Han et al, 2011 ), internet gaming disorder ( Lin et al, 2015 ), migraine ( Farago et al, 2017 ), and Wilson’s disease ( Hu et al, 2017 ). To date, little is known about the frequency specificities of SFBO in adolescent GAD.…”

Disentangling the Role of Working Memory in Parkinson’s Disease

“…As there is evidence of problems of WM functioning also in other WM subdomains in PD patients, we expected that also other WM deficits could be observed, especially if the global cognitive functioning was affected (Siegert et al, 2008 ). Second, based on the role of the cortico-striatal loops in depression/anxiety (Remy et al, 2005 ; Joutsa et al, 2013 ; Qian et al, 2017 ) and prior behavioral evidence (Aarsland et al, 2003 ; Hobson and Meara, 2004 ; Uc et al, 2009 ; Chen et al, 2016 ), we expected to find a link between WM and depression/anxiety symptoms commonly observed in PD. Or perhaps, the patients’ self-experienced everyday difficulties in cognitively demanding situations could rather reflect psychiatric factors.…”

“…Another important issue is whether deficits in such a central cognitive function as WM and its subdomains (e.g., D’Esposito and Postle, 2015 ) are related to other cognitive as well such as psychiatric deficits, potentially hampering everyday lives of the patients (e.g., Hofmann et al, 2012 ; Alloway and Horton, 2016 ). Several studies have demonstrated that particularly in PD patients, depression/anxiety is associated with abnormal functioning of the cortico-striatal loops (Remy et al, 2005 ; Joutsa et al, 2013 ; Qian et al, 2017 ). Thus, a link between WM and psychiatric symptoms could be expected because of the overlapping neuropathology (Joutsa et al, 2013 ).…”