Cited by 132Functional Brain Connectivity StudiesDementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchAlzheimer's disease research and treatments

Within-patient correspondence of amyloid-β and intrinsic network connectivity in Alzheimer’s disease

Open access
Myers, Nicholas, Pasquini, Lorenzo, Göttler, Jens, Grimmer, Timo, Koch, Kathrin, Ortner, Marion, Neitzel, Julia, Mühlau, Mark +8 more·2014·Brain

Abstract

There is striking overlap between the spatial distribution of amyloid-β pathology in patients with Alzheimer's disease and the spatial distribution of high intrinsic functional connectivity in healthy persons. This overlap suggests a mechanistic link between amyloid-β and intrinsic connectivity, and indeed there is evidence in patients for the detrimental effects of amyloid-β plaque accumulation on intrinsic connectivity in areas of high connectivity in heteromodal hubs, and particularly in the default mode network. However, the observed spatial extent of amyloid-β exceeds these tightly circumscribed areas, suggesting that previous studies may have underestimated the negative impact of amyloid-β on intrinsic connectivity. We hypothesized that the known positive baseline correlation between patterns of amyloid-β and intrinsic connectivity may mask the larger extent of the negative effects of amyloid-β on connectivity. Crucially, a test of this hypothesis requires the within-patient comparison of intrinsic connectivity and amyloid-β distributions. Here we compared spatial patterns of amyloid-β-plaques (measured by Pittsburgh compound B positron emission tomography) and intrinsic functional connectivity (measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging) in patients with prodromal Alzheimer's disease via spatial correlations in intrinsic networks covering fronto-parietal heteromodal cortices. At the global network level, we found that amyloid-β and intrinsic connectivity patterns were positively correlated in the default mode and several fronto-parietal attention networks, confirming that amyloid-β aggregates in areas of high intrinsic connectivity on a within-network basis. Further, we saw an internetwork gradient of the magnitude of correlation that depended on network plaque-load. After accounting for this globally positive correlation, local amyloid-β-plaque concentration in regions of high connectivity co-varied negatively with intrinsic connectivity, indicating that amyloid-β pathology adversely reduces connectivity anywhere in an affected network as a function of local amyloid-β-plaque concentration. The local negative association between amyloid-β and intrinsic connectivity was much more pronounced than conventional group comparisons of intrinsic connectivity would suggest. Our findings indicate that the negative impact of amyloid-β on intrinsic connectivity in heteromodal networks is underestimated by conventional analyses. Moreover, our results provide first within-patient evidence for correspondent patterns of amyloid-β and intrinsic connectivity, with the distribution of amyloid-β pathology following functional connectivity gradients within and across intrinsic networks.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/brain/awu103

Cites

57 of 57 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Myers, N., Pasquini, L., Göttler, J., Grimmer, T., Koch, K., Ortner, M., Neitzel, J., Mühlau, M., Förster, S., Kurz, A., Förstl, H., Zimmer, C., Wohlschläger, A. M., Riedl, V., Drzezga, A., & Sorg, C.
Affiliations
  • TUM Klinikum (DE)
  • Technical University of Munich (DE)
  • University of Cologne (DE)
Corresponding author
Myers, Nicholas
Venue
Brain
Published
2014-04-26
Volume
137
Issue
7
Pages
2052-2064
ISSN
  • 0006-8950 (ISSN-L)
  • 1460-2156
OpenAlex
W2031921419
Cited by
132
References
57
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 14 · 2014: 7
FWCI
9.67
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Brain (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • mediaTUM (Technical University of Munich) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Wellcome Trust
  • Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (01ER0803, 01EV0710)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
Keywords
amyloid plaques, intrinsic functional connectivity, Alzheimer's disease, prodromal Alzheimer's disease, default mode network, frontoparietal attention network, within-patient comparison, Pittsburgh compound B PET, resting-state fMRI
MeSH terms
Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Alzheimer Disease, Analysis of Variance, Aniline Compounds, Brain, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Neural Pathways, Neuropsychological Tests, Thiazoles, Amyloid beta-Peptides, Positron-Emission Tomography, Plaque, Amyloid

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review