Cortical Thickness, Volume, and Surface Area in the Motoric Cognitive Risk Syndrome

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Blumen, Helena M.^{a; b; *} | Schwartz, Emily^b | Allali, Gilles^{b; c} | Beauchet, Olivier^d | Callisaya, Michele^{e; f} | Doi, Takehiko^g | Shimada, Hiroyuki^h | Srikanth, Velandai^{e; f} | Verghese, Joe^{a; b}

Affiliations: [a] Department of Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA | [b] Department of Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA | [c] Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Geneva University Hospitals and University of Geneva, Switzerland | [d] Division of Geriatric Medicine, Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital & Dr. Joseph Kaufmann Chair in Geriatric Medicine, Faculty of Medicine McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada | [e] Peninsula Clinical School, Central Clinical School, Monash University, Victoria, Australia | [f] Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia | [g] Section for Health Promotion, Department of Preventive Gerontology | [h] National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Obu, Aichi, Japan

Correspondence: [*] Correspondence to: Helena M. Blumen, PhD, Departments of Medicine and Neurology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, 10461 USA. Tel.: +1 718 430 3810; E-mail: helena.blumen@einsteinmed.org.

Abstract: Background:The motoric cognitive risk (MCR) syndrome is a pre-clinical stage of dementia characterized by slow gait and cognitive complaint. Yet, the brain substrates of MCR are not well established. Objective:To examine cortical thickness, volume, and surface area associated with MCR in the MCR-Neuroimaging Consortium, which harmonizes image processing/analysis of multiple cohorts. Methods:Two-hundred MRIs (M age 72.62 years; 47.74%female; 33.17%MCR) from four different cohorts (50 each) were first processed with FreeSurfer 6.0, and then analyzed using multivariate and univariate general linear models with 1,000 bootstrapped samples (n-1; with resampling). All models adjusted for age, sex, education, white matter lesions, total intracranial volume, and study site. Results:Overall, cortical thickness was lower in individuals with MCR than in those without MCR. There was a trend in the same direction for cortical volume (p = 0.051). Regional cortical thickness was also lower among individuals with MCR than individuals without MCR in prefrontal, insular, temporal, and parietal regions. Conclusion:Cortical atrophy in MCR is pervasive, and include regions previously associated with human locomotion, but also social, cognitive, affective, and motor functions. Cortical atrophy in MCR is easier to detect in cortical thickness than volume and surface area because thickness is more affected by healthy and pathological aging.

Keywords: Cognitive complaint, cortical thickness, gait, motoric cognitive risk

DOI: 10.3233/JAD-201576

Journal: Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 651-665, 2021