Structural and functional evaluation of cortical motor areas in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Cosottini, Mirco; Pesaresi, Ilaria; Piazza, Selina; Diciotti, Stefano; Cecchi, Paolo; Fabbri, Serena; Carlesi, Cecilia; Mascalchi, Mario; Siciliano, Gabriele

doi:10.1016/j.expneurol.2011.12.024

Cited by 71 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…The profile of GM atrophy in our patients was in agreement with previous studies that had reported motor and extramotor GM atrophy in a parietotemporal network [42–49], as well as the putamen [44, 50–52]. …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Voxel-based mapping of grey matter volume and glucose metabolism profiles in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

et al. 2017

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BackgroundAmyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rapidly progressive disease of the nervous system involving both upper and lower motor neurons. The patterns of structural and metabolic brain alterations are still unclear. Several studies using anatomical MRI yielded a number of discrepancies in their results, and a few PET studies investigated the effect of ALS on cerebral glucose metabolism. The aim of this study was threefold: to highlight the patterns of grey matter (GM) atrophy, hypometabolism and hypermetabolism in patients with ALS, then to understand the neurobehavioral significance of hypermetabolism and, finally, to investigate the regional differences between the morphologic and functional changes in ALS patients, using a specially designed voxel-based method.Thirty-seven patients with ALS and 37 age- and sex-matched healthy individuals underwent both structural MRI and 18[F]-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET examinations. PET data were corrected for partial volume effects. Structural and metabolic abnormalities were examined in ALS patients compared with control subjects using two-sample t tests in statistical parametric mapping (SPM). Then, we extracted the metabolic values of clusters presenting hypermetabolism to correlate with selected cognitive scores. Finally, GM atrophy and hypometabolism patterns were directly compared with a one-paired t test in SPM.ResultsWe found GM atrophy as well as hypometabolism in motor and extra motor regions and hypermetabolism in medial temporal lobe and cerebellum. We observed negative correlations between the metabolism of the right and left parahippocampal gyri and episodic memory and between the metabolism of right temporal pole and cognitive theory of mind. GM atrophy predominated in the temporal pole, left hippocampus and right thalamus, while hypometabolism predominated in a single cluster in the left frontal superior medial cortex.ConclusionsOur findings provide direct evidence of regional variations in the hierarchy and relationships between GM atrophy and hypometabolism in ALS. Moreover, the 18FDG-PET investigation suggests that cerebral hypermetabolism is deleterious to cognitive function in ALS.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Voxel-based mapping of grey matter volume and glucose metabolism profiles in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

et al. 2017

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“…Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) is a quantitative automated method which performs a whole brain voxel-wise comparison of the local concentration of gray matter (GM) between two groups of subjects [17] and has been applied to the investigation of regional atrophy of the cerebral cortex in several neurodegenerative diseases. In ALS a reduction of GM volume within the precentral gyrus was reported by some authors [18], [19] and interpreted to reflect the classical pathological description of the loss of Betz cells in the V layer of the cerebral motor cortex [20]. Further VBM studies [18], [19], [21], [22] revealed that the cortical atrophy in ALS is not confined to the primary motor cortex but extends to premotor and parietal areas [18], [21] and to extramotor cortices such as temporal and prefrontal cortex [18], [19], [22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 72%

Mapping Cortical Degeneration in ALS with Magnetization Transfer Ratio and Voxel-Based Morphometry

et al. 2013

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Pathological and imaging data indicate that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a multisystem disease involving several cerebral cortical areas. Advanced quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques enable to explore in vivo the volume and microstructure of the cerebral cortex in ALS. We studied with a combined voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and magnetization transfer (MT) imaging approach the capability of MRI to identify the cortical areas affected by neurodegeneration in ALS patients. Eighteen ALS patients and 18 age-matched healthy controls were examined on a 1.5T scanner using a high-resolution 3D T1 weighted spoiled gradient recalled sequence with and without MT saturation pulse. A voxel-based analysis (VBA) was adopted in order to automatically compute the regional atrophy and MT ratio (MTr) changes of the entire cerebral cortex. By using a multimodal image analysis MTr was adjusted for local gray matter (GM) atrophy to investigate if MTr changes can be independent of atrophy of the cerebral cortex. VBA revealed several clusters of combined GM atrophy and MTr decrease in motor-related areas and extra-motor frontotemporal cortex. The multimodal image analysis identified areas of isolated MTr decrease in premotor and extra-motor frontotemporal areas. VBM and MTr are capable to detect the distribution of neurodegenerative alterations in the cortical GM of ALS patients, supporting the hypothesis of a multi-systemic involvement in ALS. MT imaging changes exist beyond volume loss in frontotemporal cortices.

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“…Cortical atrophy in ALS has been revealed in several voxel-based morphometry works [40][41][42] by manual or automated measurements of the cortical thickness and has been interpreted as a structural surrogate of UMN degeneration. 23 In particular, the regional grade of atrophy in different areas of M1 corresponds to a somatotopic functional disability supporting the concepts of cortical focality and motor phenotype heterogeneity.…”

Section: Cortical Thickness In the M1 Of Patients With Alsmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Resolution 7T MR Imaging of the Motor Cortex in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Cosottini¹,

Donatelli

Costagli³

et al. 2015

AJNR Am J Neuroradiol

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BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive motor neuron disorder that involves degeneration of both upper and lower motor neurons. In patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, pathologic studies and ex vivo high-resolution MR imaging at ultra-high field strength revealed the co-localization of iron and activated microglia distributed in the deep layers of the primary motor cortex. The aims of the study were to measure the cortical thickness and evaluate the distribution of iron-related signal changes in the primary motor cortex of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as possible in vivo biomarkers of upper motor neuron impairment.

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Structural and functional evaluation of cortical motor areas in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Cited by 71 publications

References 83 publications

Voxel-based mapping of grey matter volume and glucose metabolism profiles in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Voxel-based mapping of grey matter volume and glucose metabolism profiles in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Mapping Cortical Degeneration in ALS with Magnetization Transfer Ratio and Voxel-Based Morphometry

High-Resolution 7T MR Imaging of the Motor Cortex in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

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