MADISON, WI — What effect does reduced cerebral cortical thickness have in Parkinson’s disease (PD)?
A study led by researchers from the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health sought to answer that question.
Noting that reduced cerebral cortical thickness could reflect network-based degeneration, the study team performed cognitive assessment and brain MRI in 30 PD participants and 41 controls at baseline and 18 months later. Results were published by Cerebral Cortex Communications.1
Researchers had hypothesized that cerebral cortical thickness and volume, as well as any change in them, would vary between PD participants who remained cognitively stable and those who experienced cognitive decline. They divided the participant sample into PD-stable, PD-decline and control-stable groups and then compared mean cortical thickness and volume within segments that comprise the prefrontal cognitive-control, memory, dorsal spatial and ventral object-based networks at baseline.
The study then used a vertex-wise approach to compare the rate of change in cortical thickness and volume among the same groups.
Results indicated that the PD-decline group had lower cortical thickness within all four cognitive networks in comparison with controls. There also was lower cortical thickness within the prefrontal and medial temporal networks in comparison with the PD-stable group, and the PD-decline group had a greater rate of volume loss in the lateral temporal cortices compared with the control group.
“This study suggests that lower thickness and volume in prefrontal, medial and lateral temporal regions may portend cognitive decline in PD,” the authors concluded.
- Pletcher C, Dabbs K, Barzgari A, Pozorski V, Haebig M, Wey S, Krislov S, Theisen F, Okonkwo O, Cary P, Oh J, Illingworth C, Wakely M, Law L, Gallagher CL. Cerebral cortical thickness and cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease. Cereb Cortex Commun. 2023 Jan 14;4(1):tgac044. doi: 10.1093/texcom/tgac044. PMID: 36660417; PMCID: PMC9840947.
