Document Type
Article
Source of Publication
Neurological Sciences
Publication Date
1-1-2025
Abstract
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a complex neurodegenerative disease, characterized by pronounced heterogeneity in symptoms. This study investigates the functional connectivity (FC) patterns associated with distinct symptom clusters, aiming to elucidate the heterogeneity in PD and uncover the neural mechanisms underlying its motor and cognitive symptoms. Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data from 55 non-demented PD patients and 24 healthy controls (HC) were used to perform seed-to-seed FC analyses. A clustering algorithm was applied to the cognitive and motor scores of all PD patients to generate relatively homogeneous symptomatic subgroups. PD patients exhibited a general decrease in FC within a network comprising the sensorimotor network (SMN) and the visual network (VN) regions. Symptom-based clustering revealed three relatively homogeneous subgroups, exhibiting a gradient pattern: patients with greater motor deficits showed significant disconnection within the SMN, whereas patients with greater visuospatial deficits exhibited reduced FC in an extended subnetwork, with pronounced disconnections between the VN and SMN areas. Our study demonstrated a notable disconnection between the SMN and VN, indicating impaired visual-motor integration in PD. Stronger disconnection within the SMN was associated with greater motor dysfunction, and stronger visual-sensorimotor disconnections were associated with greater visuospatial deficits. These findings suggest that at least two separate routes of functional disconnection may be responsible for the inhomogeneous symptom distribution in PD.
DOI Link
ISSN
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences
Keywords
Cognitive impairment, Functional connectivity, Magnetic resonance imaging, Parkinson’s disease, Visuospatial functions
Scopus ID
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Kicik, Ani; Bayram, Ali; Erdogdu, Emel; Kurt, Elif; Saridede, Dilek Betul; Cengiz, Sevim; Bilgic, Basar; Hanagasi, Hasmet A.; Ozturk-Isik, Esin; Gurvit, Hakan; Tuzun, Erdem; and Demiralp, Tamer, "Investigation of symptom-specific functional connectivity patterns in Parkinson’s disease" (2025). All Works. 7377.
https://zuscholars.zu.ac.ae/works/7377
Indexed in Scopus
yes
Open Access
yes
Open Access Type
Hybrid: This publication is openly available in a subscription-based journal/series