Abstract #1463

Functional connectivity of white matter as a biomarker of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease

Yurui Gao^1,2, Anirban Sengupta¹, Muwei Li^1,3, Zhongliang Zu^1,3, Baxter P Rogers^1,3, Adam W Anderson^1,2,3, Zhaohua Ding^1,4, and John C Gore^1,2,3

¹Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ²Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States, ³Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ⁴Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States

Pathological alterations of white matter (WM) have been reported during the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study extended our previous rsfMRI analyses of WM tract BOLD correlations to evaluate WM functional connectivity (FC) in 383 subjects at different stages of cognitive impairment and found that WM FCs 1) decline regionally in late AD groups relative to a control group, 2) are related to cognitive behavioral scores, and 3) are well-performing features for distinguishing AD patients from controls. These findings suggest the potential of WM FC, which has been overlooked, as a novel neuroimaging biomarker to assess AD progression.

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