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Disrupted topological organization of functional brain networks is associated with cognitive impairment in hypertension patients: a resting-state fMRI study

  • Functional Neuroradiology
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Abstract

Purpose

To investigate the alterations of topological organization of the whole brain functional networks in hypertension patients with cognitive impairment (HTN-CI) and characterize its relationship with cognitive scores.

Methods

Fifty-seven hypertension patients with cognitive impairment and 59 hypertension patients with normal cognition (HTN-NC), and 49 healthy controls (HCs) underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. Graph theoretical analysis was used to investigate the altered topological organization of the functional brain networks. The global topological properties and nodal metrics were compared among the three groups. Network-based statistic (NBS) analysis was used to determine the connected subnetwork. The relationships between network metrics and cognitive scores were also characterized.

Results

HTN-CI patients exhibited significantly decreased global efficiency, lambda, and increased shortest path length when compared with HCs. In addition, both HTN-CI and HTN-NC groups exhibited altered nodal degree centrality and nodal efficiency in the right precentral gyrus. The disruptions of global network metrics (lambda, Lp) and the nodal metrics (degree centrality and nodal efficiency) in the right precentral gyrus were positively correlated with the MoCA scores in HTN-CI. NBS analysis demonstrated that decreased subnetwork connectivity was present both in the HTN-CI and HTN-NC groups, which were mainly involved in the default mode network, frontoparietal network, and cingulo-opercular network.

Conclusion

This study demonstrated the alterations of topographical organization and subnetwork connectivity of functional brain networks in HTN-CI. In addition, the global and nodal network properties were correlated with cognitive scores, which may provide useful insights for the understanding of neuropsychological mechanisms underlying HTN-CI.

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Data availability

The datasets used or analysed during the current study are included in this published article.

Code or software availability

MATLAB 2013b (The Mathworks, Natick, MA, USA), Statistical Parametric Mapping, version 12 (SPM12, http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm), and DPABI (http://rfmri.org/dparbi) software were used for resting-state image pre-processing. The functional connection matrix was constructed (including nodes and edges) by using the graph theoretical network analysis toolbox (GRETNA, http://www.nitrc.org/projects/gretna). NBS toolbox (https://www.nitrc.org/projects/nbs) was used for the subnetwork connectivity analysis.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the patients and healthy controls who joined in the present study.

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Author notes

  1. Dan Liao and Zhu-Qing Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100010, China

    Dan Liao, Zhu-Qing Zhang, Zhi-Peng Guo, Ming-Hao Yang & Chun-Hong Liu

  2. Department of Radiology, Guizhou Provincial People’s Hospital, Guiyang, 550002, Guizhou, China

    Dan Liao, Rong-Ping Wang & Xin-Feng Liu

  3. Department of Radiology and Psychiatry, Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100032, China

    Li-Rong Tang

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  1. Dan Liao
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Chun-Hong Liu contributed to the conception of the study; Dan Liao and Zhi-Peng Guo performed the experiment; Dan Liao and Zhu-Qing Zhang contributed significantly to the analysis and manuscript preparation; Ming-Hao Yang performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript; Xin-Feng Liu helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xin-Feng Liu or Chun-Hong Liu.

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The authors declare that there is no potential conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

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This study received approval from the Medical Ethics Committee of Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University, and this study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Liao, D., Zhang, ZQ., Guo, ZP. et al. Disrupted topological organization of functional brain networks is associated with cognitive impairment in hypertension patients: a resting-state fMRI study. Neuroradiology 65, 323–336 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-022-03061-1

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