Genetic load determines atrophy in hand cortico-striatal pathways in presymptomatic Huntington's disease
- Others:
- Department of Computer Science [Athens GA] ; University of Georgia [USA]
- Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology [Boston] ; Brigham and Women's Hospital [Boston]
- Modelling brain structure, function and variability based on high-field MRI data (PARIETAL) ; Service NEUROSPIN (NEUROSPIN) ; Université Paris-Saclay-Direction de Recherche Fondamentale (CEA) (DRF (CEA)) ; Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Université Paris-Saclay-Direction de Recherche Fondamentale (CEA) (DRF (CEA)) ; Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA)-Inria Saclay - Ile de France ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)
- Computational Imaging of the Central Nervous System (ATHENA) ; Inria Sophia Antipolis - Méditerranée (CRISAM) ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)
- University of Iowa [Iowa City]
- Columbia University [New York]
- Department of Psychiatry [Boston] ; Massachusetts General Hospital [Boston]
- Laboratory of Mathematics in Imaging [Boston] ; Brigham and Women's Hospital [Boston]
- Harvard Medical School [Boston] (HMS)
Description
Huntington's disease (HD) is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that causes progressive breakdown of striatal neurons. Standard white matter integrity measures like fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity derived from diffusion tensor imaging were analyzed in prodromal-HD subjects; however, they studied either a whole brain or specific subcortical white matter structures with connections to cortical motor areas. In this work, we propose a novel analysis of a longitudinal cohort of 243 prodromal-HD individuals and 88 healthy controls who underwent two or more diffusion MRI scans as part of the PREDICT-HD study. We separately trace specific white matter fiber tracts connecting the striatum (caudate and putamen) with four cortical regions corresponding to the hand, face, trunk, and leg motor areas. A multi-tensor tractography algorithm with an isotropic volume fraction compartment allows Hong et al., Genetic load determines hand atrophy in preHD 2 estimating diffusion of fast-moving extra-cellular water in regions containing crossing fibers and provides quantification of a microstructural property related to tissue atrophy. The tissue atrophy rate is separately analyzed in eight cortico-striatal pathways as a function of CAG-repeats (genetic load) by statistically regressing out age effect from our cohort. The results demonstrate a statistically significant increase in isotropic volume fraction (atrophy) bilaterally in hand fiber connections to the putamen with increasing CAG-repeats, which connects the genetic abnormality (CAG-repeats) to an imaging-based microstructural marker of tissue integrity in specific white matter pathways in HD. Isotropic volume fraction measures in eight cortico-striatal pathways are also correlated significantly with total motor scores and diagnostic confidence levels, providing evidence of their relevance to HD clinical presentation.
Abstract
International audience
Additional details
- URL
- https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01787886
- URN
- urn:oai:HAL:hal-01787886v2
- Origin repository
- UNICA