Rich club analysis in the Alzheimer's disease connectome reveals a relatively undisturbed structural core network.

ABSTRACT: Diffusion imaging can assess the white matter connections within the brain, revealing how neural pathways break down in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We analyzed 3-Tesla whole-brain diffusion-weighted images from 202 participants scanned by the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative-50 healthy controls, 110 with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 42 AD patients. From whole-brain tractography, we reconstructed structural brain connectivity networks to map connections between cortical regions. We tested whether AD disrupts the "rich club" - a network property where high-degree network nodes are more interconnected than expected by chance. We calculated the rich club properties at a range of degree thresholds, as well as other network topology measures including global degree, clustering co

SUBMITTER: Daianu M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4504816 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature