Subcortical Atrophy Is Associated with Cognitive Impairment in Mild Parkinson Disease: A Combined Investigation of Volumetric Changes, Cortical Thickness, and Vertex-Based Shape Analysis

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:The involvement of subcortical deep gray matter and cortical thinning associated with mild Parkinson disease remains poorly understood. We assessed cortical thickness and subcortical volumes in patients with Parkinson disease without dementia and evaluated their associations with cognitive dysfunction.

Imaging in Parkinson's Disease

“…Subcortical GM changes can also occur in PDD and affect mainly the hippocampus (Apostolova et al, 2010;Camicioli et al, 2003;Junque et al, 2005;Zarei et al, 2013), thalamus (Burton et al, 2004), putamen (Burton et al, 2004), amygdala (Junque et al, 2005;Zarei et al, 2013), and the caudate (Apostolova et al, 2010;Burton et al, 2004). Regional atrophy in temporal, parietal, and frontal cortices (Melzer et al, 2012;Pagonabarraga et al, 2013;Pereira et al, 2014;Segura et al, 2014;Weintraub et al, 2011) and thalamus (Mak, Bergsland, Dwyer, Zivadinov, & Kandiah, 2014) and hippocampus (Weintraub et al, 2011) has been observed in PD-MCI.…”

We Know Now: Mavridis Atrophy Is Associated with Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson Disease

“…read the recent article by Mak et al 1 regarding the association of subcortical atrophy with cognitive impairment in Parkinson disease (PD), with great interest. The authors assessed cortical thickness and subcortical volumes in patients with PD without dementia and evaluated their associations with cognitive dysfunction.…”

“…In the clinical study of Mak et al, 1 the total volume of the NA was significantly correlated with a range of cognitive variables, including overall scores of attention/working memory and language. They also found that a trend toward the associations between NA and global cognition and executive function performance on attention/working memory was associated with reduced volumes of the NA and putamen.…”

“…They found that patients with PD and mild cognitive impairment demonstrated reduced volumes of the thalamus and nucleus accumbens (NA) and significant associations for the NA and putamen with performances on the attention/working memory domains and NA and language domains. 1 The purpose of this communication is to comment on the phenomenon of NA atrophy in PD and its correlation with cognitive symptoms.…”

Reproducibility of Deep Gray Matter Atrophy Rate Measurement in a Large Multicenter Dataset

“…[7][8][9][10] More recently, research revealed that deep GM atrophy specifically plays an important role in the characterization, course, and progression of AD [11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and in other diseases like MS [18][19][20] and Parkinson disease. [21][22][23] Measurements of deep GM atrophy could therefore be of importance in the evaluation of neuroprotective treatment (eg, in investigating drug efficacy). Currently, a growing number of clinical trials are incorporating brain volume changes as an early biomarker.…”