Spatiotemporal Network Dynamics Reveal Alzheimer's Disease Progression

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by progressive disruptions in large-scale brain networks that precede cognitive decline, yet conventional functional connectivity analyses often fail to detect disruptions in coordination among large-scale brain networks that may be critical for early detection. This study leverages quasi periodic patterns (QPPs) and complex principal component analysis (cPCA) to characterize spatiotemporal network alterations across longitudinally stable (normal cognitive, mild cognitive impairment, dementia of Alzheimer's type) and transitioning (normal cognitive to mild cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment to dementia of Alzheimer's type) cohorts from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative using resting state fMRI. QPPs were used to derive recurrent spatiotemporal templates and network integrity measures at the intrinsic connectivity network level, while cPCA decomposed Hilbert transformed time series into complex valued patterns that capture amplitude and phase relationships. Nonparametric group comparisons revealed a structured trajectory in which limbic, subcortical, and higher cognition networks, including triple network components, are affected early, followed by progressive disruption in visual, cerebellar, sensorimotor, and additional triple network systems. Transitioning cohorts showed many of these alterations before formal diagnostic conversion, indicating that spatiotemporal signatures carry preclinical information. QPP based metrics were particularly sensitive to limbic and subcortical degradation, whereas cPCA emphasized changes in higher order, visual, and cerebellar patterns, revealing complementary aspects of the same underlying pathology. These findings extend prior QPP only work and highlight the utility of combining QPP and cPCA based measures as a dynamic, network-level biomarker framework for AD progression. with potential applications in early detection, characterizing disease trajectories, and treatment monitoring.