Objective: We aimed to explore associated neural substrates changes in Parkinson’s disease (PD) with apathy via amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and Granger Causality Analysis (GCA).

Background: Apathy, as an affective, cognitive, and behavioral syndrome, is a common non-motor symptom in PD. Although a set of studies have investigated its possible pathogenesis, the results were quite different, which couldn’t come to a consistent conclusion.

Methods: 42 PD patients were finally recruited, including 20 patients with apathy (PD-A) and 22 patients without apathy (PD-NA). In addition, we recruited 19 healthy controls (HCs). All subjects were evaluated for demographic and clinical characteristics and performed 3.0 T MRI scans. GCA, a new method exploring direction from one brain region to another in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), was based on brain regions showing alterations of neural activity as seeds, which were examined utilizing ALFF approach.

Results: Relative to PD-NA group, PD-A group indicated decreased ALFF in left orbital middle frontal gyrus and bilateral superior frontal gyrus (SFG). Only ALFF values in right SFG were negatively correlated with Apathy Scale (AS) scores. Then GCA with the seed of right SFG showed a positive feedback from right thalamus to ipsilateral SFG, which positively correlated with AS scores.

Conclusions: We hypothesized that dysfunction in SFG and a positive feedback from thalamus to ipsilateral SFG might contribute to PD-related apathy. Our speculation might provide a new perspective for future study on apathy in PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/disrupted-amplitude-of-low-frequency-fluctuations-and-causal-connectivity-in-parkinsons-disease-with-apathy/