Cited by 71Parkinson's Disease Mechanisms and TreatmentsDementia and Cognitive Impairment ResearchFunctional Brain Connectivity Studies

Neuroimaging in Parkinson’s disease dementia: connecting the dots

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Weil, Rimona S, Hsu, Joey K, Darby, Ryan R, Soussand, Louis, Fox, Michael D·2019·Brain Communications

Abstract

Dementia is a common and devastating symptom of Parkinson’s disease but the anatomical substrate remains unclear. Some evidence points towards hippocampal involvement but neuroimaging abnormalities have been reported throughout the brain and are largely inconsistent across studies. Here, we test whether these disparate neuroimaging findings for Parkinson’s disease dementia localize to a common brain network. We used a literature search to identify studies reporting neuroimaging correlates of Parkinson’s dementia (11 studies, 385 patients). We restricted our search to studies of brain atrophy and hypometabolism that compared Parkinson’s patients with dementia to those without cognitive involvement. We used a standard coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis to assess for consistency in the neuroimaging findings. We then used a new approach, coordinate-based network mapping, to test whether neuroimaging findings localized to a common brain network. This approach uses resting-state functional connectivity from a large cohort of normative subjects (n = 1000) to identify the network of regions connected to a reported neuroimaging coordinate. Activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis failed to identify any brain regions consistently associated with Parkinson’s dementia, showing major heterogeneity across studies. In contrast, coordinate-based network mapping found that these heterogeneous neuroimaging findings localized to a specific brain network centred on the hippocampus. Next, we tested whether this network showed symptom specificity and stage specificity by performing two further analyses. We tested symptom specificity by examining studies of Parkinson’s hallucinations (9 studies, 402 patients) that are frequently co-morbid with Parkinson’s dementia. We tested for stage specificity by using studies of mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease (15 studies, 844 patients). Coordinate-based network mapping revealed that correlates of visual hallucinations fell within a network centred on bilateral lateral geniculate nucleus and correlates of mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson’s disease fell within a network centred on posterior default mode network. In both cases, the identified networks were distinct from the hippocampal network of Parkinson’s dementia. Our results link heterogeneous neuroimaging findings in Parkinson’s dementia to a common network centred on the hippocampus. This finding was symptom and stage-specific, with implications for understanding Parkinson’s dementia and heterogeneity of neuroimaging findings in general.

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  1. de Morsier G. Les automatismes visuels. (Hallucinations visuelles retrochiasmatiques). Schweizerische Medizinische Wochenschrift 1936; 66: 700– 3.
  2. de Morsier G. Les hallucinations: etude Oto-neuro-ophtalmologique. Rev Oto-Neuro-Ophtalmol 1938; 16: 244– 352.

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Authors
Weil, R. S., Hsu, J. K., Darby, R. R., Soussand, L., & Fox, M. D.
Affiliations
  • Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (US)
  • Vanderbilt University Medical Center (US)
Corresponding author
Weil, Rimona S
Venue
Brain Communications
Published
2019-01-01
Volume
1
Issue
1
Pages
fcz006-fcz006
ISSN
2632-1297 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2958270502
Cited by
71
References
119
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 2
FWCI
6.09
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Brain Communications (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Wellcome Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship (201567/Z/16/Z)
  • Sidney R. Baer, Jr. Foundation
  • NIH (R01MH113929)
  • Nancy Lurie Marks Foundation
  • G. Harold
  • Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation
  • Alzheimer’s foundation
  • Brightfocus foundation
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Neurology › Parkinson's Disease Mechanisms and Treatments
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
Keywords
Parkinson's disease dementia, hippocampus, brain networks, brain atrophy, hypometabolism, visual hallucinations, lateral geniculate nucleus, mild cognitive impairment, posterior default mode network, symptom specificity

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