Comparison of variables associated with cerebrospinal fluid neurofilament, total-tau, and neurogranin

INTRODUCTION: Three cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) markers of neurodegeneration (N) (neurofilament light [NfL], total-tau [T-tau], and neurogranin [Ng]) have been proposed under the AT(N) scheme of the National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer's Association Research Framework. METHODS: We examined, in a community-based population (N = 777, aged 50-95) (1) what variables were associated with each of the CSF (N) markers, and (2) whether the variables associated with each marker differed by increased brain amyloid. CSF T-tau was measured with an automated electrochemiluminescence Elecsys immunoassay; NfL and Ng were measured with in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. RESULTS: Multiple variables were differentially associated with CSF NfL and T-tau levels, but not Ng. Most associations were attenuated after adjustment for age and sex. T-tau had the strongest association with cognition in the presence of amyloidosis, followed by Ng. Variables associations with NfL did not differ by amyloid status. DISCUSSION: Understanding factors that influence CSF (N) markers will assist in the interpretation and utility of these markers in clinical practice

Statistical analysis of human boy movement and group interactions in response to music

Quantification of time series that relate to physiological data is challenging for empirical music research. Up to now, most studies have focused on time-dependent responses of individual subjects in controlled environments. However, little is known about time-dependent responses of between-subject interactions in an ecological context. This paper provides new findings on the statistical analysis of group synchronicity in response to musical stimuli. Different statistical techniques were applied to time-dependent data obtained from an experiment on embodied listening in individual and group settings. Analysis of inter group synchronicity are described. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and Cross Correlation Function (CCF) were found to be valid methods to estimate group coherence of the resulting movements. It was found that synchronicity of movements between individuals (human human interactions) increases significantly in the social context. Moreover, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed that the type of music is the predominant factor in both the individual and the social context

Plasma and CSF neurofilament light: Relation to longitudinal neuroimaging and cognitive measures

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to (1) assess and compare baseline plasma and CSF neurofilament light (NfL) for cross-sectional and longitudinal associations with neuroimaging or cognition and (2) determine whether change in plasma NfL corresponded with change in these outcomes. // METHODS: Seventy-nine participants without dementia, median age 76 years, had plasma and CSF NfL, neuropsychological testing, and neuroimaging (MRI, amyloid PET, FDG-PET) at the same study visit, and a repeat visit (15 or 30 months later) with both plasma NfL and neuroimaging. Plasma NfL was measured on the Simoa-HD1 Platform and CSF NfL with an in-house ELISA. Linear mixed effects models were used to examine the associations between baseline plasma or CSF NfL and cognitive and neuroimaging outcomes adjusting for age, sex, and education. The relationship between change in plasma NfL and change in the outcomes was assessed using linear regression. // RESULTS: There were no cross-sectional associations between CSF or plasma NfL and any neuroimaging or cognitive measure. Longitudinally, higher baseline plasma NfL was associated with worsening in all neuroimaging measures, except amyloid PET, and global cognition. Higher baseline CSF NfL was associated with worsening in cortical thickness and diffusion MRI. The beta estimates for CSF NfL were similar to those for plasma NfL. Change in plasma NfL was associated with change in global cognition, attention, and amyloid PET. // CONCLUSION: Elevated baseline plasma NfL is a prognostic marker of cognitive decline and neuroimaging measures of neurodegeneration, and has similar effect sizes to baseline CSF NfL. Change in plasma NfL also tracked with short-term cognitive change

Non-Stationarity in the “Resting Brain’s” Modular Architecture

Task-free functional magnetic resonance imaging (TF-fMRI) has great potential for advancing the understanding and treatment of neurologic illness. However, as with all measures of neural activity, variability is a hallmark of intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) identified by TF-fMRI. This variability has hampered efforts to define a robust metric of connectivity suitable as a biomarker for neurologic illness. We hypothesized that some of this variability rather than representing noise in the measurement process, is related to a fundamental feature of connectivity within ICNs, which is their non-stationary nature. To test this hypothesis, we used a large (n = 892) population-based sample of older subjects to construct a well characterized atlas of 68 functional regions, which were categorized based on independent component analysis network of origin, anatomical locations, and a functional meta-analysis. These regions were then used to construct dynamic graphical representations of brain connectivity within a sliding time window for each subject. This allowed us to demonstrate the non-stationary nature of the brain’s modular organization and assign each region to a “meta-modular” group. Using this grouping, we then compared dwell time in strong sub-network configurations of the default mode network (DMN) between 28 subjects with Alzheimer’s dementia and 56 cognitively normal elderly subjects matched 1∶2 on age, gender, and education. We found that differences in connectivity we and others have previously observed in Alzheimer’s disease can be explained by differences in dwell time in DMN sub-network configurations, rather than steady state connectivity magnitude. DMN dwell time in specific modular configurations may also underlie the TF-fMRI findings that have been described in mild cognitive impairment and cognitively normal subjects who are at risk for Alzheimer’s dementia

Resting-State Multi-Spectrum Functional Connectivity Networks for Identification of MCI Patients

In this paper, a high-dimensional pattern classification framework, based on functional associations between brain regions during resting-state, is proposed to accurately identify MCI individuals from subjects who experience normal aging. The proposed technique employs multi-spectrum networks to characterize the complex yet subtle blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal changes caused by pathological attacks. The utilization of multi-spectrum networks in identifying MCI individuals is motivated by the inherent frequency-specific properties of BOLD spectrum. It is believed that frequency specific information extracted from different spectra may delineate the complex yet subtle variations of BOLD signals more effectively. In the proposed technique, regional mean time series of each region-of-interest (ROI) is band-pass filtered ( Hz) before it is decomposed into five frequency sub-bands. Five connectivity networks are constructed, one from each frequency sub-band. Clustering coefficient of each ROI in relation to the other ROIs are extracted as features for classification. Classification accuracy was evaluated via leave-one-out cross-validation to ensure generalization of performance. The classification accuracy obtained by this approach is 86.5%, which is an increase of at least 18.9% from the conventional full-spectrum methods. A cross-validation estimation of the generalization performance shows an area of 0.863 under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, indicating good diagnostic power. It was also found that, based on the selected features, portions of the prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, temporal lobe, and parietal lobe regions provided the most discriminant information for classification, in line with results reported in previous studies. Analysis on individual frequency sub-bands demonstrated that different sub-bands contribute differently to classification, providing extra evidence regarding frequency-specific distribution of BOLD signals. Our MCI classification framework, which allows accurate early detection of functional brain abnormalities, makes an important positive contribution to the treatment management of potential AD patients

Disrupted Small-World Brain Networks in Moderate Alzheimer's Disease: A Resting-State fMRI Study

The small-world organization has been hypothesized to reflect a balance between local processing and global integration in the human brain. Previous multimodal imaging studies have consistently demonstrated that the topological architecture of the brain network is disrupted in Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, these studies have reported inconsistent results regarding the topological properties of brain alterations in AD. One potential explanation for these inconsistent results lies with the diverse homogeneity and distinct progressive stages of the AD involved in these studies, which are thought to be critical factors that might affect the results. We investigated the topological properties of brain functional networks derived from resting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of carefully selected moderate AD patients and normal controls (NCs). Our results showed that the topological properties were found to be disrupted in AD patients, which showing increased local efficiency but decreased global efficiency. We found that the altered brain regions are mainly located in the default mode network, the temporal lobe and certain subcortical regions that are closely associated with the neuropathological changes in AD. Of note, our exploratory study revealed that the ApoE genotype modulates brain network properties, especially in AD patients

Reduced hippocampal activation during episodic encoding in middle-aged individuals at genetic risk of Alzheimer's Disease: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND: The presence of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele is a major risk factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and has been associated with metabolic brain changes several years before the onset of typical AD symptoms. Functional MRI (fMRI) is a brain imaging technique that has been used to demonstrate hippocampal activation during measurement of episodic encoding, but the effect of the ε4 allele on hippocampal activation has not been firmly established. METHODS: The present study examined the effects of APOE genotype on brain activation patterns in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) during an episodic encoding task using a well-characterized novel item versus familiar item contrast in cognitively normal, middle-aged (mean = 54 years) individuals who had at least one parent with AD. RESULTS: We found that ε3/4 heterozygotes displayed reduced activation in the hippocampus and MTL compared to ε3/3 homozygotes. There were no significant differences between the groups in age, education or neuropsychological functioning, suggesting that the altered brain activation seen in ε3/4 heterozygotes was not associated with impaired cognitive function. We also found that participants' ability to encode information on a neuropsychological measure of learning was associated with greater activation in the anterior MTL in the ε3/3 homozygotes, but not in the ε3/4 heterozygotes. CONCLUSION: Together with previous studies reporting reduced glucose metabolism and AD-related neuropathology, this study provides convergent validity for the idea that the MTL exhibits functional decline associated with the APOE ε4 allele. Importantly, these changes were detected in the absence of meaningful neuropsychological differences between the groups. A focus of ongoing work in this laboratory is to determine if these findings are predictive of subsequent cognitive decline

Association of Initial β-Amyloid Levels With Subsequent Flortaucipir Positron Emission Tomography Changes in Persons Without Cognitive Impairment

Importance: Tau accumulation in Alzheimer disease (AD) is closely associated with cognitive impairment. Quantitating tau accumulation by positron emission tomography (PET) will be a useful outcome measure for future clinical trials in the AD spectrum. / Objective: To investigate the association of β-amyloid (Aβ) on PET with subsequent tau accumulation on PET in persons who were cognitively unimpaired (CU) to gain insight into temporal associations between Aβ and tau accumulation and inform clinical trial design. / Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study included individuals aged 65 to 85 years who were CU and had participated in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, with serial cognitive assessments, serial magnetic resonance imaging, 11C-Pittsburgh compound B (Aβ) PET scans, and 18F-flortaucipir PET scans, collected from May 2015 to March 2020. Persons were excluded if they lacked follow-up PET scans. A similarly evaluated CU group from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) were also studied. These data were collected from September 2015 to March 2020. / Exposures: Participants were stratified by index Aβ levels on PET into low Aβ (≤8 centiloid [CL]), subthreshold Aβ (9-21 CL), suprathreshold Aβ (22-67 CL), and high Aβ (≥68 CL). / Main Outcomes and Measures: Changes over a mean of 2.7 (range, 1.1-4.1) years in flortaucipir PET in entorhinal, inferior temporal, and lateral parietal regions of interest and an AD meta–region of interest (ROI). / Results: A total of 167 people were included (mean age, 74 [range, 65-85] years; 75 women [44.9%]); 101 individuals were excluded lacking follow-up, and 114 individuals from the ADNI were also studied (mean [SD] age, 74.14 [5.29] years; 64 women [56.1%]). In the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, longitudinal flortaucipir accumulation rates in the high Aβ group were greater than the suprathreshold, subthreshold, and low Aβ groups in the entorhinal ROI (suprathreshold, 0.025 [95% CI, 0.013-0.037] standardized uptake value ratio [SUVR] units; subthreshold, 0.026 [95% CI, 0.014-0.037] SUVR units; low Aβ, 0.034 [95% CI, 0.02-0.049] SUVR units), inferior temporal ROI (suprathreshold, 0.025 [95% CI, 0.014-0.035] SUVR units; subthreshold, 0.027 [95% CI, 0.017-0.037] SUVR units; low Aβ, 0.035 [95% CI, 0.022-0.047] SUVR units), and the AD meta-ROI (suprathreshold, 0.023 [95% CI, 0.013-0.032] SUVR units; subthreshold, 0.025 [95% CI, 0.016-0.034] SUVR units; low Aβ, 0.032 [95% CI, 0.021-0.043] SUVR units) (all P < .001). Flortaucipir accumulation rates in the subthreshold and suprathreshold Aβ groups in temporal regions were nonsignificantly elevated compared with the low Aβ group. In the ADNI cohort, the variance was larger than in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging but point estimates for annualized flortaucipir accumulation in the inferior temporal ROI were very similar. An estimated 216 participants who were CU per group with PET Aβ of 68 CL or more would be needed to detect a 25% annualized reduction in flortaucipir accumulation rate in the AD meta-ROI with 80% power. / Conclusions and Relevance: Substantial flortaucipir accumulation in temporal regions is greatest in persons aged 65 to 85 years who were CU and had high initial Aβ PET levels, compared with those with lower Aβ levels. Recruiting persons who were CU and exhibiting Aβ of 68 CL or more on an index Aβ PET is a feasible strategy to recruit for clinical trials in which a change in tau PET signal is an outcome measure