Longitudinal Locus Coeruleus Imaging across the Alzheimer’s Spectrum
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Noradrenergic neurons of the locus coeruleus (LC) may play a critical role in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). LC imaging with MRI is a promising in vivo method to study the role of this system in AD. Here we investigate longitudinal change in LC integrity across the AD spectrum. Method This study included 291 participants from the TRIAD cohort at the McGill Research Center for Studies in Aging (cognitively normal: n = 166, mild cognitive impairment: n = 79, AD: n = 46). Follow‐up data was available for 123 participants. All participants underwent MR imaging including a turbo spin echo (TSE) sequence for LC imaging, tau positron emission tomography (using [18F]MK6240), and clinical and cognitive assessment including the Mini Mental State Exam (MMSE). LC signal contrast was assessed relative to a pontine reference region. Linear regression analyses related LC signal to clinical measures. Result Consistent with prior work in an earlier version of this sample, at baseline, LC signal was reduced in tau positive participants (t(285) = ‐4.56, p<0.0001) and negatively correlated to AD severity (Braak stage: t(253) = ‐4.79, p<0.0001; MMSE score: t(254) = 4.30, p<0.0001). There was no significant change in LC signal over time (t(122) = 1.36, p = 0.18) and no significant impact of tau status on LC change (t(119) = 0.39, p = 0.70). Counterintuitively, there was evidence of increasing LC signal in the most severe participants, as those with low MMSE score (<27) showed a significant signal increase over time (t(16) = 2.16, p = 0.046). Moreover, increasing LC signal in tau positive participants was correlated to reduction in MMSE performance over time (t(35) = ‐2.13, p = 0.040). In contrast, tau negative participants showed the opposite trend (t(52) = 1.97, p = 0.054). Conclusion While cross‐sectional analyses found the expected negative correlation between LC signal and AD severity, longitudinal analyses obtained the surprising result that increasing signal correlated to worsening AD severity. This finding could suggest that the LC imaging sequence used (TSE) may imperfectly capture LC degeneration and signal increases could be driven by other factors occuring simultaneously with LC degeneration (perhaps elevated neuromelanin or tau deposition). Future work could determine if different types of LC sequence (TSE versus magnetization transfer) differ in their ability to capture degeneration and provide complementary information.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".