Apathy and white matter integrity in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: A whole brain analysis with tract‐based spatial statistics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Apathy is one of the most prevalent neuropsychiatric symptoms in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and is associated with an increased risk for progression to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in AD have shown that apathy is associated with changes in the cingulum, corpus callosum and uncinate fasciculus (Hahn et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2011). However, the underlying white matter (WM) correlates of apathy in aMCI are still unclear. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the association between the severity of apathy and white matter integrity in aMCI using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and tract‐based spatial statistics (TBSS). Method Twenty‐nine aMCI patients and 20 cognitively healthy controls were included. Apathy severity was assessed with the Apathy Evaluation Scale Clinician version (AES‐C). Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). We calculated a sub‐score of the GDS (i.e. GDS non‐apathy) which excluded apathy‐related items (Adams et al., 2004). We applied whole‐brain TBSS analyses to all DTI parameters: i.e. fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD), and radial diffusivity (RD), investigating which WM areas were associated with apathy severity. Age, gender, MMSE, and GDS non‐apathy were used as covariates. Significance was set to p< .05, corrected for multiple comparisons using Threshold‐Free Cluster Enhancement (TFCE). Result There was no statistical difference between groups on age, gender, education level, MMSE, and AES‐C scores. Group comparison TBSS analyses showed that the aMCI group did not differ in any of the DTI parameters compared to the control group. Within the aMCI group, significant inverse associations were observed between AES‐C scores and FA values in the bilateral genu and body of the corpus callosum, anterior and superior corona radiata, anterior thalamic radiation, anterior part of inferior frontooccipital fasciculus, and the right forceps minor, superior longitudinal fasciculus/arcuate fasciculus anterior segment, corticospinal tract/internal capsule (pTFCE< .05). A similar pattern was observed in the combined group of aMCI and controls (pTFCE< .025). Conclusion There was no significant WM integrity difference between aMCI and control groups. Our findings point to reduced integrity in widely distributed WM pathways being related to apathy severity, regardless of aMCI diagnosis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".