title: Abnormal integrity of association fiber tracts in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.
abstract: The association fiber tracts integrity of the inter-hemispheric and within-hemispheric communication was poor understood in amnestic type mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). A region of interest-based DTI approach was applied to explore fiber tract differences between 22 aMCI patients and 22 well-matched normal aging. Correlations were also sought between fractional anisotropy (FA) values and the cognitive performance scores in the aMCI patients. Extensive impairment of association fiber tracts integrity was observed in aMCI patients, including bilateral inferior fronto-occipital fascicles, the genu of corpus callosum, bilateral cingulate bundles and bilateral superior longitudinal fascicles II (SLE II) subcomponent. In addition, the FA value of right SLE II was significantly negatively correlated to the performance of Trail Making Test A and B, whilst the values of right posterior cingulate bundle was significantly positive correlation with MMSE score. As aMCI is a putative prodromal syndrome to Alzheimer's disease (AD), this study suggested that investigation of association fiber tracts between remote cortexes may yield important new data to predict whether a patient will eventually develop AD.
authors.affiliation: School of Clinical Medicine, Southeast University, and the Department of Neurology, Affiliated ZhongDa Hospital of Southeast University, Nanjing 210009, China.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.forename: Zhijun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: David R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Yongmei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Yonggui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Yun
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.forename: Jianping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jia
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D016880:Anisotropy; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000473:pathology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric