Cortical neurodevelopment in pre-manifest Huntington's disease.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:The expression of the HTT CAG repeat expansion mutation causes neurodegeneration in Huntington's disease (HD). OBJECTIVES:In light of the - mainly in-vitro - evidence suggesting an additional role of huntingtin in neurodevelopment we used 3T MRI to test the hypothesis that in CAG-expanded individuals without clinical signs of HD (preHD) there is evidence for neurodevelopmental abnormalities. METHODS:We specifically investigated the complexity of cortical folding, a measure of cortical neurodevelopment, employing a novel method to quantify local fractal dimension (FD) measures that uses spherical harmonic reconstructions. RESULTS:The complexity of cortical folding differed at a group level between preHD (n = 57) and healthy volunteers (n = 57) in areas of the motor and visual sys

SUBMITTER: Kubera KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6627026 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature