Brain activity in Parkinson's disease patients with mild cognitive impairment

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is common in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), yet the underlying neural mechanisms of this disease state remain unclear. We investigated alterations in the spontaneous brain activity of PD patients with MCI (PD-MCI) relative to cognitively normal PD patients (PD-CN) and healthy control (HC) subjects. In this work, 13 PD-MCI patients, 16 PD-CN patients, and 16 HC subjects completed resting state functional MRI. Spontaneous brain activity was measured by calculating amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) values across the whole brain. Between-group differences and correlations between ALFF values and cognitive test scores were analyzed. ALFF values decreased in the right superior temporal gyrus and increased in the left middle temporal gyrus and left superior frontal gyrus of PD-MCI patients compared with PD-CN patients. In the PD-MCI group, ALFF values in the left middle temporal gyrus were negatively correlated with Montreal Cognitive Assessment and vocabulary test scores, and the ALFF values in the left superior frontal gyrus were negatively correlated with vocabulary test scores. Our study demonstrates that PD-MCI is associated with abnormal spontaneous brain activity in the temporal and frontal lobes. These findings inform the underlying neural mechanism of cognitive impairment in PD.