Author: Yifei Hao, Ting Huang, Wenxuan Li, Xiang Li, Manju Liu, Rong Liu, Tao Peng, Yulu Wu, Fang-Fang Yin, Lei Zhang, Yaogong Zhang, Jiangtao Zhu 👨🔬
Affiliation: Duke University, Department of Radiology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, School of Future Science and Engineering, Soochow University, Medical Physics Graduate Program, Duke Kunshan University 🌍
Purpose: This study investigates the alterations in structure-function coupling (SC-FC) networks in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, focusing on region-specific disruptions and compensatory mechanisms by multi-modal MRI image analysis. It aims to identify SC-FC decoupling patterns across the brain and evaluate their potential as imaging-based biomarkers for disease diagnosis and potential therapeutic intervention evaluation.
Methods: Twenty-eight PD patients and twenty-six healthy controls (HC) underwent 3T MRI, including diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI),resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI), and T1-weighted MP-RAGE structural MRI were included. Structural connectivity (SC) was derived from streamline counts obtained through MRtrix3’s tractography and SIFT filtering, while functional connectivity (FC) was computed from rs-fMRI BOLD signal correlations between 164 brain regions. Connectivity density analysis was used to identify the top 20 regions with the largest differences between PD and HC groups. SC-FC coupling coefficients were calculated using Pearson and Spearman correlation methods, with statistical comparisons corrected via False Discovery Rate (FDR). Statistically significant regions are projected to ICBM152 template for location visualization.
Results: PD patients exhibited significantly reduced SC-FC coupling in cortical regions, including the anterior cingulate gyrus (p = 0.0054) and postcentral gyrus (p = 0.0060). Subcortical regions, such as the caudate (p = 0.0009) and putamen (p = 0.0092), also demonstrated reduced coupling. Conversely, increased coupling was observed in the thalamus (Pearson: p = 0.0314; Spearman: p = 0.0324), indicating potential compensatory plasticity. Connectivity density analysis highlighted critical regions for prioritization in SC-FC coupling evaluations.
Conclusion: By incorporating dMRI, fMRI and sMRI techniques, we demonstrated that SC-FC coupling alterations revealed brain region-specific disruptions and compensatory mechanisms in PD patients, with cortical decoupling associated with motor and cognitive deficits and thalamic coupling suggesting adaptive responses. These findings highlight SC-FC metrics as potential imaging-based biomarkers for understanding PD pathophysiology and guiding targeted interventions.