Aberrant Multimodal Connectivity Pattern Involved in Default Mode Network and Limbic Network in Amyotrophic Lateral...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Neuroimaging
• Neurology

Background:

• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting motor function.
• ALS is increasingly recognized as a multinetwork disorder with aberrant brain connectivity.
• The integrity and diagnostic predictive value of ALS brain connectivity require further elucidation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate structural and functional brain connectivity in ALS patients compared to healthy controls.
• To explore the relationship between structural and functional connectivity (SC-FC coupling) in ALS.
• To evaluate the potential of SC-FC coupling as a neuroimaging biomarker for ALS diagnosis.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 37 ALS patients and 25 healthy controls (HCs).
• Utilized high-resolution 3D T1-weighted imaging and resting-state functional MRI to create multimodal connectomes.
• Applied Network-Based Statistic (NBS), SC-FC coupling analysis, and Support Vector Machine (SVM) for classification.

Main Results:

• ALS patients showed increased functional connectivity, particularly between the default mode network (DMN) and frontoparietal network (FPN).
• Increased structural connections were observed between the limbic network (LN) and DMN, and salience/ventral attention network (SVAN) and FPN.
• Decreased structural connections involved the LN and subcortical network (SN). Increased SC-FC coupling in DMN regions and decoupling in LN regions differentiated ALS from HCs.

Conclusions:

• The default mode network (DMN) and limbic network (LN) play crucial roles in ALS pathophysiology.
• Structural-functional connectivity (SC-FC) coupling serves as a promising neuroimaging biomarker for ALS.
• SC-FC coupling demonstrates significant clinical potential for the early recognition of ALS individuals.