Objective: To identify changes in volume of the thalamus and its subnuclei in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) related anxiety.

Background: PD-related anxiety occurs frequently and may be associated with imbalance between anxiety-related circuits. While the thalamus is a common region of these circuits, its role in PD-related anxiety was not explored so far.

Method: Cognitively intact PD patients (n=105) were divided into two groups based on their score on the Parkinson anxiety scale (PAS): 31 PD patients had anxiety (Anx-PD) and 74 did not have anxiety (non-Anx-PD). Fourty-five healthy controls were also included. All participants underwent 7-Tesla MRI scanning. Using an automatic segmentation pipeline, the volume of the thalamus and its subnuclei were extracted for each dataset. These were compared between the groups and regressed on the PAS score.

Results: The volume of the thalamus or its sub did not significantly differ between groups. However, in anxious patients, a higher severity of anxiety was strongly associated with a smaller volume of the right mediodorsal thalamic subregion, more specifically the right mediodorsal magnocellular nucleus and the right mediodorsal parvocellular nucleus (R = 0.63, ß_PAS = -0,546, p-value_model = 0.007 and R = 0.60, ß_PAS = -0,547, p-value_model = 0.016, respectively).

Conclusion: A reduced volume of the dorsomedial thalamus, an overlapping structure between the anxiety related circuits, is associated with a higher severity of PD-related anxiety and may explain its high prevalence in the disease.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/reduced-thalamic-nuclei-volume-may-contribute-to-anxiety-in-parkinsons-disease-a-7-tesla-mri-study/