Abnormal fronto-striatal functional connectivity in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by the relatively selective depletion of dopamine in the striatum, which consequently leads to dysfunctions in cortico-striatal-thalamic-cortical circuitries. It has been shown that the most common cognitive deficits in PD patients are related to the fronto-striatal circuits. In PD, most previous functional connectivity studies have been performed using seed-based methods to identify the brain regions that are abnormally connected to one or more seeds, but these cannot be used to quantify the interactions between one region and all other regions in a particular network. Functional connectivity degree, which is a measurement that can be used to quantify the functional or structural connectivity of a complex brain network, was adopted in this study to assess the interactions of the fronto-striatal network. Compared to healthy controls, PD patients had significantly decreased total functional connectivity degree for the left putamen and the right globus pallidum in fronto-striatal networks. Additionally, negative correlations between the fronto-pallial functional connectivity degree (i.e., the right globus pallidum with the left middle frontal gyrus, and with the right triangular part of inferior frontal gyrus) and disease duration were observed in PD patients. The results of this study demonstrate that fronto-striatal functional connectivity is abnormal in patients with PD and indicate that these deficits might be the result of motor and cognitive dysfunctions in PD patients.