Abstract #5293

Differential changes in functional connectivity of fronto-striatal and motor-striatal circuits in early and premanifest Huntington’s Disease measured by ultra-high field (7T) resting state BOLD fMRI

Jun Hua^1,2, Martin Kronenbuerger^3,4, Xinyuan Miao^1,2, James Pekar^1,2, Peter van Zijl^1,2, and Christopher Ross^3,4,5

¹Dept. of Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States, ²F.M. Kirby Research Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States, ³Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States, ⁴Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States, ⁵Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor, cognitive and behavioral deficits. The striatum is one of the first brain regions that show detectable atrophy in HD. Reduced functional connectivity between striatum and motor cortex has been reported. Here, we report decreased motor-striatal connectivity but increased fronto-striatal connectivity in early/premanifest HD patients. We speculate that this may imply a compensatory mechanism, where additional cortical regions are recruited to subserve functions that have been impaired due to HD pathology. We also found strong correlations between functional connectivity and genetic measures, suggesting its potential value as a biomarker for HD.

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