Objective: To clarify the relationship between functional connectivity changes in the brain and visuoperceptual disturbances in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Background: Patients with PD show a variety of visual dysfunction, however, functional connectivity changes related to visuoperceptual deficits remain unclear.

Methods: Fifty-nine non-demented patients with PD were enrolled. We evaluated visuospatial and visuoperceptual abilities using the Visual Object and Space Perception Battery (VOSP). 50 PD and 32 healthy controls (HC) were scanned with 3T-MRI. For the investigation of resting-state networks, we conducted independent component analysis, dual-regression analysis and seed-based analysis using resting-state fMRI images.

Results: PD group had lower scores in incomplete letter, position discrimination and cube analysis tests than HC group (p < 0.001, p < 0.01, p < 0.01, respectively). Among 50 patients scanned with MRI, 18 patients (36%) had incomplete letter scores below mean - 2SD of normative data. These patients had significantly lower functional connectivity mainly in the cortices around the calcarine sulcus located within the primary visual network (p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons), which consists of primary and secondary visual cortices. Seed-based analysis showed that functional connectivity between these aberrant regions and the surrounding amygdala regions negatively correlated with incomplete letter scores (r = -0.53, p = 6.6×10-5).

Conclusions: Our study suggested that lower functional connectivity within the primary visual network, and higher functional connectivity between the visual cortex and the amygdala, were closely associated with visuoperceptual disturbances in PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/clinical-and-functional-network-features-of-visuoperceptual-disturbances-in-parkinsons-disease/