Weaker Instantaneous Connectivity, But Greater Lagged Connectivity, between Brain Regions in Mild Cognitive Impairment
Disciplines
Biological Psychology | Clinical Psychology | Cognitive Psychology | Psychology
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is the earlier stage of dementia, with much higher rates of transition to Alzheimer’s Disease than the non-MCI population. MCI may involve subtle damage to memory-related brain regions. Current research presumes that MCI patients have higher levels of connectivity than those with non-impaired brains, as a compensatory mechanism consistent with wider activation seen in healthy aging. Contradicting this hypothesis, data shows that the connectivity between the left and the right hippocampus, and between the left and the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex of MCI participants have significantly higher instantaneous connectivity in the control group. The findings further show that there exists a narrow and nonsignificant difference in the coherence and phase synchronization. The data are not consistent with our hypothesis. On the contrary, the overall information transmission of MCI between left and right brains areas lagged that of age-matched healthy controls each time.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
RCHSS - Psychological Science
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Tim Martin
Additional Faculty
Voyko Kavcic, Institute of Gerontology, Wayne State University, eq2623@wayne.edu.
Weaker Instantaneous Connectivity, But Greater Lagged Connectivity, between Brain Regions in Mild Cognitive Impairment
Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) is the earlier stage of dementia, with much higher rates of transition to Alzheimer’s Disease than the non-MCI population. MCI may involve subtle damage to memory-related brain regions. Current research presumes that MCI patients have higher levels of connectivity than those with non-impaired brains, as a compensatory mechanism consistent with wider activation seen in healthy aging. Contradicting this hypothesis, data shows that the connectivity between the left and the right hippocampus, and between the left and the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex of MCI participants have significantly higher instantaneous connectivity in the control group. The findings further show that there exists a narrow and nonsignificant difference in the coherence and phase synchronization. The data are not consistent with our hypothesis. On the contrary, the overall information transmission of MCI between left and right brains areas lagged that of age-matched healthy controls each time.