Widespread Increase of Functional Connectivity in Parkinson’s Disease with Tremor: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a clinically heterogeneous disease in the symptomatology dominated by tremor, akinesia, or rigidity. Focusing on PD patients with tremor, this study investigated their discoordination patterns of spontaneous brain activity by combining voxel-wise centrality, seed-based functional connectivity, and network efficiency methods. Sixteen patients and 20 matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited and underwent structural and resting-state functional MRI scan. Compared with the HCs, the patients exhibited increased centrality in the frontal, parietal, and occipital regions while decreased centrality in the cerebellum anterior lobe and thalamus. Seeded at these regions, a distributed network was further identified that encompassed cortical (default mode network, sensorimotor cortex, prefrontal and occipital areas) and subcortical (thalamus and basal ganglia) regions and the cerebellum and brainstem. Graph-based analyses of this network revealed increased information transformation efficiency in the patients. Moreover, the identified network correlated with clinical manifestations in the patients and could distinguish the patients from HCs. Morphometric analyses revealed decreased gray matter volume in multiple regions that largely accounted for the observed functional abnormalities. Together, these findings provide a comprehensive view of network disorganization in PD with tremor and have important implications for understanding neural substrates underlying this specific type of PD.