Functional connectomes of akinetic-rigid and tremor within drug-naïve Parkinson's disease

To detect functional connectomes of akinetic-rigid (AR) and tremor and compare their connection pattern.

Resting-state functional MRI data of 78 drug-naïve PD patients were enrolled to construct connectomes of AR and tremor via connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM). The connectomes were further validated with 17 drug-naïve patients to verify their replication.

The connectomes related to AR and tremor were identified via CPM method and successfully validated in the independent set. Additional regional-based CPM demonstrated neither AR nor tremor could be simplified to functional changes within a single brain region. Computational lesion version of CPM revealed that parietal lobe and limbic system were the most important regions among AR-related connectome, and motor strip and cerebellum were the most important regions among tremor-related connectome. Comparing two connectomes found that the patterns of connection between them were largely distinct, with only four overlapped connections identified.

AR and tremor were found to be associated with functional changes in multiple brain regions. Distinct connection patterns of AR-related and tremor-related connectomes suggest different neural mechanisms underlying the two symptoms.