Structural and functional MRI changes associated with cognitive impairment and dementia in Parkinson disease

Abstract

Objective: Cognitive impairment in Parkinson disease (PD) places a high burden on patients and the pathophysiological mechanisms that differentiate patients with cognitive impairment from those without it are still incompletely understood. Methods: We conducted a resting-state seed region-of-interest approach to investigate functional connectivity (FC) of important subdivisions of the caudate nucleus, putamen and thalamus in controls (n=33), cognitively unimpaired subjects (PD-CU, n=33), PD subjects with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI, n=22) and subjects with dementia (PDD, n=17). We then investigated how the morphology of these structures differed between groups. Results: PD-CU subjects,..