Hippocampus co-atrophy pattern in dementia deviates from covariance patterns across the lifespan

Brain, vol. 143, pp. 2788–2802

Abstract

The hippocampus is a plastic region and highly susceptible to ageing and dementia. Previous studies explicitly imposed a priori models of hippocampus when investigating ageing and dementia-specific atrophy but led to inconsistent results. Consequently, the basic question of whether macrostructural changes follow a cytoarchitectonic or functional organization across the adult lifespan and in age-related neurodegenerative disease remained open. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to identify the spatial pattern of hippocampus differentiation based on structural covariance with a data-driven approach across structural MRI data of large cohorts (n = 2594). We examined the pattern of structural covariance of hippocampus voxels in young, middle-aged, elderly, mild cognitive impairment and dementia disease samples by applying a clustering algorithm revealing differentiation in structural covariance within the hippocampus. In all the healthy and in the mild cognitive impaired participants, the hippocampus was robustly divided into anterior, lateral and medial subregions reminiscent of cytoarchitectonic division. In contrast, in dementia patients, the pattern of subdivision was closer to known functional differentiation into an anterior, body and tail subregions. These results not only contribute to a better understanding of co-plasticity and co-atrophy in the hippocampus across the lifespan and in dementia, but also provide robust data-driven spatial representations (i.e. maps) for structural studies.

Authors 10

1. Anna Plachti corresponding

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

   Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 40225, Germany

2. Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

   Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 40225, Germany

3. Simon Bodo Eickhoff

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

   Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 40225, Germany

4. Somayeh Maleki Balajoo

   Forschungszentrum Jülich

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

5. Felix Hoffstaedter

   Forschungszentrum Jülich

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

6. Deepthi P. Varikuti

   Forschungszentrum Jülich

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

7. Christiane Jockwitz Aachen Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics Medical Faculty

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

8. Svenja Caspers

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance · Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute for Anatomy I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

   JARA-BRAIN, Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance, Jülich, Germany

9. Katrin Amunts

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance · Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

   Affiliation as printed

   C. & O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany

   Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany

   JARA-BRAIN, Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance, Jülich, Germany

10. Sarah Genon

    University of Liège · Forschungszentrum Jülich

    Affiliation as printed

    GIGA-CRC In vivo Imaging, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium

    Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1, INM-7), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany