Neuroimaging biomarkers differentiate Parkinson disease with and without cognitive impairment and dementia

Abstract

Mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson disease places a high burden on patients and is likely a precursor to Parkinson disease-related dementia. Studying the functional connectivity and morphology of subcortical structures within basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits may uncover neuroimaging biomarkers of cognitive dysfunction in PD. We used an atlas-based seed region-of-interest approach to investigate resting-state functional connectivity of important subdivisions of the caudate nucleus, putamen and thalamus, between controls (n = 33), cognitively unimpaired Parkinson disease subjects (n = 33), Parkinson disease subjects with mild cognitive impairment (n = 22) and Parkinson disease subjec..