White matter lesions relate to tract-specific reductions in functional connectivity.

White matter lesions play a role in cognitive decline and dementia. One presumed pathway is through disconnection of functional networks. Little is known about location-specific effects of lesions on functional connectivity. This study examined location-specific effects within anatomically-defined white matter tracts in 1584 participants of the Rotterdam Study, aged 50-95. Tracts were delineated from diffusion magnetic resonance images using probabilistic tractography. Lesions were segmented on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images. Functional connectivity was defined across each tract on resting-state functional magnetic resonance images by using gray matter parcellations corresponding to the tract ends and calculating the correlation of the mean functional activity between the gray matter regions. A significant relationship between both local and brain-wide lesion load and tract-specific functional connectivity was found in several tracts using linear regressions, also after Bonferroni correction. Indirect connectivity analyses revealed that tract-specific functional connectivity is affected by lesions in several tracts simultaneously. These results suggest that local white matter lesions can decrease tract-specific functional connectivity, both in direct and indirect connections. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Citation

Carolyn D Langen, Hazel I Zonneveld, Tonya White, Wyke Huizinga, Lotte G M Cremers, Marius de Groot, Mohammad Arfan Ikram, Wiro J Niessen, Meike W Vernooij. White matter lesions relate to tract-specific reductions in functional connectivity. Neurobiology of aging. 2017 Mar;51:97-103

Mesh Tags

PMID: 28063366

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