Association of Gyrification Pattern, White Matter Changes, and Phenotypic Profile in Patients With Parkinson Disease

To investigate the cortical gyrification changes as well as their relationships with white matter (WM) microstructural abnormalities in the akinetic-rigid (AR) and tremor-dominant (TD) subtypes of Parkinson disease (PD).

Sixty-four patients with the AR subtype, 26 patients with the TD subtype, and 56 healthy controls (HCs) were included in this study. High-resolution T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted images were acquired for each participant. We computed local gyrification index (LGI) and fractional anisotropy (FA) to identify the cortical gyrification and WM microstructural changes in the AR and TD subtypes.

Compared with HCs, patients with the AR subtype showed decreased LGI in the precentral, postcentral, inferior and superior parietal, middle and superior frontal/temporal, anterior and posterior cingulate, orbitofrontal, supramarginal, precuneus, and some visual cortices, and decreased FA in the corticospinal tract, inferior and superior longitudinal fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, forceps minor/major, and anterior thalamic radiation. Decreases in LGI and FA of the AR subtype were found to be tightly coupled. LGIs of the left inferior and middle frontal gyrus correlated with Mini-Mental State Examination and Hoehn & Yahr scores of patients with the AR subtype. Patients with the TD subtype showed no significant change in the LGI and FA compared with patients with the AR subtype and HCs.

Our results suggest that cortical gyrification changes in PD are motor phenotype-specific and are possibly mediated by the microstructural abnormalities of the underlying WM tracts.