Altered spontaneous brain activity in patients with Parkinson's disease accompanied by depressive symptoms, as revealed by regional homogeneity and functional connectivity in the prefrontal-limbic system

PLoS One. 2014 Jan 3;9(1):e84705. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084705. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

As patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) are at high risk for comorbid depression, it is hypothesized that these two diseases are sharing common pathogenic pathways. Using regional homogeneity (ReHo) and functional connectivity approaches, we characterized human regional brain activity at resting state to examine specific brain networks in patients with PD and those with PD and depression (PDD). This study comprised 41 PD human patients and 25 normal human subjects. The patients completed the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and were further divided into two groups: patients with depressive symptoms and non-depressed PD patients (nD-PD). Compared with the non-depressed patients, those with depressive symptoms exhibited significantly increased regional activity in the left middle frontal gyrus and right inferior frontal gyrus, and decreased ReHo in the left amygdala and bilateral lingual gyrus. Brain network connectivity analysis revealed decreased functional connectivity within the prefrontal-limbic system and increased functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex and lingual gyrus in PDD compared with the nD-PD group. In summary, the findings showed regional brain activity alterations and disruption of the mood regulation network in PDD patients. The pathogenesis of PDD may be attributed to abnormal neural activity in multiple brain regions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Analysis of Variance
  • Brain / pathology
  • Brain / physiopathology*
  • Brain Mapping
  • Depression / psychology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Limbic System / physiopathology*
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Neural Pathways
  • Parkinson Disease / physiopathology*
  • Parkinson Disease / psychology*
  • Prefrontal Cortex / physiopathology*

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81100981), The Project Sponsored by the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, Natural Science Foundation Project of Chongqing (CSTC, 2010BB5110). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.