Normalization effect of levodopa on hierarchical brain function in Parkinson's disease

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Network Science
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Hierarchical brain organization is crucial for global information integration.
• Parkinson's disease (PD) is increasingly viewed as a network disorder.
• The impact of PD on brain hierarchy and levodopa's regulatory role are unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate functional divergence in the hierarchical brain system in PD.
• To examine how levodopa therapy affects this divergence.
• To explore the neural mechanisms of levodopa's short-term response in PD.

Main Methods:

• Functional network construction in 61 PD patients and 89 controls.
• Application of graph theoretical analyses.
• Examination of brain hierarchical configuration and network properties.

Main Results:

• PD patients showed disrupted rich-club organization but preserved diverse club function.
• Impaired network properties and altered nodal centrality were observed in PD within rich-club and feeder subnetworks.
• Levodopa treatment normalized the abnormal rich-club network architecture.

Conclusions:

• PD exhibits differentiated brain topological organization with functional divergence.
• Levodopa demonstrates a normalizing effect on the disrupted rich-club system in PD.
• This study provides evidence for levodopa's impact on hierarchical brain systems with divergent functions in PD.