Category: Parkinson's Disease: Neuroimaging
Objective: To delineate the structural and functional alterations of the brain associated with visual dysfunction and retinal injury in Parkinson disease (PD)
Background: Several electrophysiological, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and histological studies support the existence of disease-specific neurodegeneration of inner retinal layers in PD, which has been associated with the visual disability of patients. However, few neuroimaging publications have specifically explored the brain basis of primary and higher-order visual impairment in PD.
Method: We enrolled 46 patients with idiopathic PD and 29 controls. All participants underwent structural and functional 3T brain MRI, retinal spectral-domain OCT and a comprehensive battery of primary and higher-order vision tests grouped in five visual outcomes. We evaluated the association between voxel-morphometric patterns and visual outcomes, and calculated a common anatomical region of interest (visualROI). We identified the differences in the resting-state functional connectivity of the visualROI between patients and controls. Finally, we modeled the contribution of visualROI and retinal atrophy to visual dysfunction.
Results: VisualROI was mainly comprised of bilateral amygdala and anterior hippocampus. In controls, but not in patients, visualROI had significant connections with lateral visual, dorsal attention, sensorimotor and language networks, while in patients significant connections arose with salience and cerebellar networks. Remarkably, the connectivity of anterior cingulate salience network significantly correlated with visual outcomes. In patients, parafoveal inner retinal thickness and cerebral visualROI volume independently contributed to visual dysfunction in PD, although the thinning of the inner layers of the parafoveal retina associated with lower volumes of basal ganglia and amygdala, partially overlapping with visualROI.
Conclusion: Our results suggest the central role of the amygdala and anterior hippocampus in the visual dysfunction of PD beyond retinal atrophy.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
P. Reyero, A. Erramuzpe, A. Murueta-Goyena, A. Jimenez-Marin, M. Acera, S. Teijeira-Portas, B. Tijero, R. Del Pino, T. Fernández-Valle, O. Lucas-Jiménez, N. Ibarretxe-Bilbao, U. Ayala, M. Barrenechea, A. Cabrera-Zubizarreta, J. Cortes, J. Gomez-Esteban, I. Gabilondo. Amygdala-hippocampus damage critically contributes to visual dysfunction in Parkinson disease [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2022; 37 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/amygdala-hippocampus-damage-critically-contributes-to-visual-dysfunction-in-parkinson-disease/. Accessed May 18, 2025.« Back to 2022 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/amygdala-hippocampus-damage-critically-contributes-to-visual-dysfunction-in-parkinson-disease/