5 research outputs found
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Cerebellar and subcortical atrophy contribute to psychiatric symptoms in frontotemporal dementia
Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available on request via https://www.genfi.org/study/ or by emailing [email protected]. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.Supporting Information: available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hbm.26220#support-information-section .Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Recent studies have reported early cerebellar and subcortical impact in the disease progression of genetic frontotemporal dementia (FTD) due to microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT), progranulin (GRN) and chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 (C9orf72). However, the cerebello-subcortical circuitry in FTD has been understudied despite its essential role in cognition and behaviors related to FTD symptomatology. The present study aims to investigate the association between cerebellar and subcortical atrophy, and neuropsychiatric symptoms across genetic mutations. Our study included 983 participants from the Genetic Frontotemporal dementia Initiative including mutation carriers and noncarrier first-degree relatives of known symptomatic carriers. Voxel-wise analysis of the thalamus, striatum, globus pallidus, amygdala, and the cerebellum was performed, and partial least squares analyses (PLS) were used to link morphometry and behavior. In presymptomatic C9orf72 expansion carriers, thalamic atrophy was found compared to noncarriers, suggesting the importance of this structure in FTD prodromes. PLS analyses demonstrated that the cerebello-subcortical circuitry is related to neuropsychiatric symptoms, with significant overlap in brain/behavior patterns, but also specificity for each genetic mutation group. The largest differences were in the cerebellar atrophy (larger extent in C9orf72 expansion group) and more prominent amygdalar volume reduction in the MAPT group. Brain scores in the C9orf72 expansion carriers and MAPT carriers demonstrated covariation patterns concordant with atrophy patterns detectable up to 20 years before expected symptom onset. Overall, these results demonstrated the important role of the subcortical structures in genetic FTD symptom expression, particularly the cerebellum in C9orf72 and the amygdala in MAPT carriers.Alzheimer Society of Canada; Weston Brain Institute; Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé; MRC UK GENFI, Grant/Award Number: MR/M023664/1; Italian Ministry of Health, Grant/Award Number: CoEN015; Canadian Institutes of Health Research; Alzheimer's Society grant, Grant/Award Number: AS-PG-16-007; Alzheimer's Society, Grant/Award Number: AS-JF-19a-004-517; NIHR Rare Diseases Translational Research Collaboration; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, Grant/Award Numbers: BRC-1215-20014, BRC149/NS/MH
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Network structure and transcriptomic vulnerability shape atrophy in frontotemporal dementia
Copyright © The Author(s) 2022. Connections among brain regions allow pathological perturbations to spread from a single source region to multiple regions. Patterns of neurodegeneration in multiple diseases, including behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), resemble the large-scale functional systems, but how bvFTD-related atrophy patterns relate to structural network organization remains unknown. Here we investigate whether neurodegeneration patterns in sporadic and genetic bvFTD are conditioned by connectome architecture. Regional atrophy patterns were estimated in both genetic bvFTD (75 patients, 247 controls) and sporadic bvFTD (70 patients, 123 controls). First, we identified distributed atrophy patterns in bvFTD, mainly targeting areas associated with the limbic intrinsic network and insular cytoarchitectonic class. Regional atrophy was significantly correlated with atrophy of structurally- and functionally-connected neighbours, demonstrating that network structure shapes atrophy patterns. The anterior insula was identified as the predominant group epicentre of brain atrophy using data-driven and simulation-based methods, with some secondary regions in frontal ventromedial and antero-medial temporal areas. We found that FTD-related genes, namely C9orf72 and TARDBP, confer local transcriptomic vulnerability to the disease, modulating the propagation of pathology through the connectome. Collectively, our results demonstrate that atrophy patterns in sporadic and genetic bvFTD are jointly shaped by global connectome architecture and local transcriptomic vulnerability, providing an explanation as to how heterogenous pathological entities can lead to the same clinical syndrome.Canada First Research Excellence Fund, awarded to McGill University for the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives initiative. B.M. acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN #017-04265) and from the Canada Research Chairs Program. S.D. receives salary support from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Santé (FRQS). G.S. acknowledges support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Nature et Technologies (FRQNT). V.B. acknowledges support from the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Nature et Technologies (FRQNT). FTLDNI data collection and sharing was funded by the Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration Neuroimaging Initiative (National Institutes of Health Grant R01 AG032306) and is coordinated through the University of California, San Francisco, Memory and Aging Center. FTLDNI data are disseminated by the Laboratory for Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California