Objective: To explore neural activity patterns in the essential tremor (ET) with resting tremor (rET) and tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease (tPD) by using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) method.

Background: Differentiating between rET from tPD may be challenging in the early phases of the diseases. Although some imaging studies have indicated that there are differences between rET and tPD, little is known about the rs-fMRI findings.

Methods: Our study conducted rs-fMRI with a ReHo method to investigate the modulations of neural activity in 58 ethnic Han Chinese subjects comprising 19 patients of rET, 24 patients of tPD and 25 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Differences were compared by two-sample t tests (corrected with AlphaSim, p<0.05). All participants underwent clinical assessment and the correlation with ReHo was analyzed.

Results: Compared with healthy controls, rET patients and tPD patients both displayed ReHo alterations in left inferior temporal gyrus and right inferior orbitofrontal lobe. In addition, rET patients exhibited more ReHo changes in the inferior temporal gyrus, while tPD patients in extensive cortical and sub-cortical areas, including frontal, temporal, putamen, cingulum, precuneus, and cerebelum, which are involved both in basal ganglia and the cerebello-thalamo-cortical (CTC) loops. Direct comparison between rET and tPD displayed significant differences in the primary visual cortex, and in brain regions within the so-called default mode network (DMN, e.g., precuneus, cingulum).

Conclusions: Our results indicated the rET and tPD share common parrerns of ReHo abnormalities in the temporal and orbitofrontal lobe, which may contribute to the broad spectrum of olfactory, visual, emotional and behavioral disturbances observed in these two diseases. In addition, we found disorder-specific involvement of temporal in rET and the basal ganglia and the CTC loops in tPD. These findings provide new evidence regarding the shared and specific neuropathological mechanisms that underlie rET and tPD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/regional-homogeneity-changes-detected-between-essential-tremor-with-resting-tremor-and-tremor-dominant-parkinsons-disease/