Structural and Functional Changes in Subcortical Vascular Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Combined Voxel-Based Morphometry and Resting-State fMRI Study

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate changes in structural gray matter (GM) volume and functional amplitude of spontaneous low-frequency oscillations (LFO) and functional connectivity density in patients with subcortical vascular mild cognitive impairment (svMCI). Structural MRI and resting-sate functional MRI data were collected from 26 svMCl patients and 28 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Structurally, widespread GM atrophy was found in the svMCl patients that resided primarily in frontal (e.g., the superior and middle frontal gyri and medial prefrontal cortex) and temporal (the superior and inferior temporal gyri) brain regions as well as several subcortical brain sites (e.g., the thalamus and the caudate). Functionally, svMCI-related changes were predominantly found in the default mode network (DMN). Compared with the healthy controls, the svMCl patients exhibited decreased LFO amplitudes in the anterior part of the DMN (e.g., the medial prefrontal cortex), whereas increased LFO amplitudes in the posterior part of the DMN (e.g., the posterior cingulatel precuneus). As for functional connectivity density, the DMN regions (e.g., the posterior cingulate/precuneus, the medial prefrontal cortex and the middle temporal gyrus) consistently exhibited decreased functional connectivity. Finally, the overall patterns of functional alterations in LFO amplitudes and functional connectivity density remained little changed after controlling for structural GM volume losses, which suggests that functional abnormalities can be only partly explained by morphological GM volume changes. Together, our results indicate that svMCl patients exhibit widespread abnormalities in both structural GM volume and functional intrinsic brain activity, which have important implications in understanding the pathophysiological mechanism of svMCI. Citation: Yi L, Wang J. Jia L, Zhao 2, Lu J, et al. (2012) Structural and Functional Changes in Subcortical Vascular Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Combined Voxel- Based Morphometry and Resting-State fMRl Study. PLoS ONE 7(9): e44758. doi:10.137l/journal.pone.0044758 Editor: Yu-Feng Zang, Hangzhou Normal University, China Received April 24. 2012; Accepted August 6, 2012; Published September 19. 2012 Copyright: O 2012 Yi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (30970823)(http:llwww.nsfc.gov.cn/PortalOldefaultl52.htm) and Natural Science Foundation of Hellongjiang Province of China (~03030307) (http:lljj.hljkj.cn/). National Natural Science Foundation of China played a role in data collection and analysis, decision to publish, and preparation of the manuscript. Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China played a role in data collecti

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