Abstract
During the caudo-rostral progression of Lewy pathology, the amygdala is involved relatively early in Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, lesser is known about the volumetric differences at the amygdala subdivisions, although the evidence mainly implicates the olfactory amygdala. We aimed to investigate the volumetric differences between the amygdala’s nuclear and sectoral subdivisions in the PD cognitive impairment continuum compared to healthy controls (HC). The volumes of nine nuclei of the amygdala were estimated with FreeSurfer (nuclear parcellation-NP) from T1-weighted images of PD patients with normal cognition (PD-CN), PD with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI), PD with dementia (PD-D), and HC. The appropriate nuclei were then merged to obtain three sectors of the amygdala (sectoral parcellation-SP). The nuclear and sectoral volumes were compared among the four groups and between the hyposmic and normosmic PD patients. There was a significant difference in the total amygdala volume among the four groups. In terms of nuclei, the bilateral cortico-amygdaloid transition area (CAT) and sectors superficial cortex-like region (sCLR) volumes of PD-MCI and PD-D were less than those of the PD-CN and HC. A linear discriminant analysis revealed that left CAT and left sCLR volumes classified the PD-CN and cognitively impaired PD (PD-CI: PD-MCI plus PD-D) with 90.7% accuracy according to NP and 85.2% accuracy to SP. Similarly, left CAT and sCLR volumes correctly identified the hyposmic and normosmic PD with 64.8% and 61.1% accuracies. Notably, the left olfactory amygdala volume successfully discriminated cognitive impairment in PD and could be used as neuroimaging-based support for PD-CI diagnosis.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- AAA:
-
anterior amygdala area
- AB:
-
accessory basal nuclei of amygdala
- Ba:
-
basal nuclei of amygdala
- BLNG:
-
basolateral nuclear group of amygdala
- CAT:
-
cortico-amygdaloid transition area
- Ce:
-
central nucleus
- CMG:
-
centromedial group nucleus of amygdala
- Co:
-
cortical nuclei of amygdala
- HC:
-
healthy control
- La:
-
lateral nuclei of amygdala
- LB:
-
Lewy body
- LDA:
-
linear discriminant analysis
- LN:
-
Lewy neurite
- Me:
-
medial nuclei of amygdala
- OB:
-
Olfactory bulb
- PAC:
-
periamygdaloid cortex
- PD:
-
Parkinson’s disease
- PD-CI:
-
Parkinson’s disease with cognitive impairment
- PD-CN:
-
Parkinson’s disease with normal cognition
- PD-D:
-
Parkinson’s disease with dementia
- PD-MCI:
-
Parkinson’s disease with mild cognitive impairment
- PL:
-
paralaminar nuclei of amygdala
- sCLR:
-
superficial cortex-like region of amygdala
- UPDRS:
-
Unified Parkinson’s disease Rating Scale
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Acknowledgements
Ulaş Ay acknowledges the support of Turkish Council of Higher Education for 100/2000 CoHE doctoral scholarship. We would like to acknowledge funding support from the TUBITAK grant #115S219 and the Istanbul University Research Projects Unit project #1567/42362. We would also like to Dilek Betul Arslan, Zeynep Tufekcioglu, Basar Bilgic, and Hasmet Hanagasi for their contributions to data collection. Some of the data in this paper were previously presented at the annual meeting of the Turkish Neurological Society in Antalya, Turkey, in Nov 2019, and we won first prize for an oral presentation. Therefore, we are also immensely grateful to the Turkish Neurological Society.
Funding
This study was funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) grant #115S219 and the Istanbul University Research Projects Unit project #1567/42362. EE received a yearly doctoral stipend (57140539) from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service).
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Ulaş Ay: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing - Original Draft. Zerrin Yıldırım: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - Original Draft. Emel Erdoğdu: Investigation, Resources, Data Curation. Ani Kıçik: Investigation, Resources, Data Curation. Esin Öztürk-Işık: Writing - Review & Editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Tamer Demiralp: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - Review & Editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Hakan Gürvit: Methodology, Writing - Review & Editing, Supervision.
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Ay, U., Yıldırım, Z., Erdogdu, E. et al. Shrinkage of olfactory amygdala connotes cognitive impairment in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Cogn Neurodyn 17, 1309–1320 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-022-09887-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11571-022-09887-y