The alteration landscape of the cerebral cortex

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Neurology
• Psychiatry

Background:

• Traditional diagnostic categories for brain disorders are increasingly challenged.
• Transdiagnostic research reveals shared cerebral alterations across diverse psychiatric and neurological conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a metric, alteration entropy (A-entropy), to map the "structural alteration variety" of brain regions.
• To differentiate brain areas based on their overlap in neuropathologies.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the BrainMap voxel-based morphometry database.
• Calculated A-entropy to quantify the overlap of neuropathologies in specific brain regions.

Main Results:

• Identified brain areas with high A-entropy (high overlap) linked to large-scale networks (attentional, emotional, salience, premotor), suggesting vulnerability to multiple diseases.
• Identified brain areas with low A-entropy (low overlap) including sensorimotor, visual, and temporal regions, which are more informative about specific disease impacts.
• No brain area was found to be altered by only a single disorder, indicating widespread pathological overlap.

Conclusions:

• High A-entropy areas support a transdiagnostic approach to brain disorders.
• Low A-entropy areas, while still altered by multiple disorders, offer more specific insights into individual brain disease profiles.
• The findings suggest a nuanced understanding of brain pathology, balancing shared transdiagnostic features with disorder-specific alterations.