Distribution of the Functional Atrophy in the Striatum Territory of Huntington's Patients

Linda Marrakchi-Kacem^1,2, Christine Delmaire³, Alan Tucholka^4,5, Pauline Roca^1,2, Pamela Guevara^1,2, Sophie Lecomte^1,2, Fabrice Poupon^1,2, Jerome Yelnik⁶, Alexandra Durr⁶, Jean-Franois Mangin^1,2, Stephane Lehericy^2,3, Cyril Poupon^1,2

In this study, we focused on the study of distribution of the atrophy of each functional (associative, limbic and sensorimotor) territory of striatal nuclei in the case of the Huntington's disease. We proposed a novel method for measuring the proportion of each functional territory in the caudate and putamen nuclei. This method relies on the use of surface probabilistic connectivity maps of striato-cortical connectivity. The advantage of this new approach compared to the use of existing parcellations of the striatal nuclei is that it takes into account the overlap existing between the functional territories inside the striatum. The proportion of each functional territory was computed for healthy subjects and Huntington's patients to check whether the Huntington's disease can be responsable of the change of the distribution of the functional territories inside the striatum. The obtained results show that the distribution of the functional territory changes for patients suffering from the Huntington's disease. This could constitute a novel Biomarker of the Huntington's disease.