Association of white matter integrity and cognitive functions in patients with subcortical silent lacunar infarcts
Yaojing Chen1, Ailin Wang1, Jinfu Tang1
1From the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research (Y.C., A.W., J.T., Z.Z.) and BABRI Centre (Y.C., A.W., J.T., D.W., P.L., K.C., Y.W., Z.Z.), Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China (D.W., P.L., Y.W.); and Banner Good Samaritan PET Center, Banner Alzheimer's Institute, Phoenix, AZ (K.C.).
Background And Purpose:
Silent lacunar infarct (SLI) is a risk factor for dementia. This study investigated the white matter integrity abnormality and its relationship to the cognition impairments in SLI patients.
Methods:
Between 27 patients with SLI in basal ganglia and 30 healthy controls, we assessed the difference in a batter of neuropsychological tests and in white matter integrity measurements, fractional anisotropy, and mean diffusivity, using tract-based spatial statistics.
Results:
Compared with healthy controls, SLI patients performed worse in general mental status, memory, executive function, and language ability. They also had reduced fractional anisotropy and increase mean diffusivity in brain regions such as the body and genu of corpus callosum, the forceps minor, the bilateral superior and bilateral anterior corona radiate, and the left external capsule. Furthermore, we found that in SLI patients, fractional anisotropy measure in left external capsule was positively correlated to the performance in memory and language ability.
Conclusions:
SLI in basal ganglia leads to local and remote white matter integrity damages and to the cognition impairments.
