Combining functional and structural brain magnetic resonance imaging in Huntington disease.
OBJECTIVE
To concurrently investigate with magnetic resonance (MR) the brain activation and regional brain atrophy in patients with Huntington disease (HD).


METHODS
Nine symptomatic HD patients and 11 healthy subjects underwent an MR study including functional MR acquisition during finger tapping of the right hand and high-resolution T1-weighted images. Functional and structural data were analyzed using Statistical Parametric Mapping 2 software.


RESULTS
As compared with control subjects, HD patients showed decreased activation in the left caudate nucleus and medial frontal and anterior cingulate gyri and increased activation in the right supplementary motor area and supramarginal gyrus and left intraparietal sulcus. The pattern of atrophy included thinning of the gray matter (GM) in the insula, inferior frontal gyrus, caudate, lentiform nucleus, and thalamus, bilaterally, in the left middle frontal, middle occipital, and middle temporal gyri, and of periventricular, subinsular, right temporal lobe, and left internal capsule white matter. Only the decreased activation in the caudate nucleus correlated topographically with the caudate GM loss.


CONCLUSIONS
The cortical areas of functional changes do not correspond to those of GM atrophy in patients with HD and are likely to reflect decreased output of the motor basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit and compensatory recruitment of accessory motor pathways.
Gavazzi
Cinzia
C
Radiodiagnostic Section, Department of Clinical Physiopathology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Nave
Riccardo Della
RD
Petralli
Raffaele
R
Rocca
Maria Assunta
MA
Guerrini
Laura
L
Tessa
Carlo
C
Diciotti
Stefano
S
Filippi
Massimo
M
Piacentini
Silvia
S
Mascalchi
Mario
M
D001284:Atrophy; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006816:Huntington Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged