Beyond variability: Unveiling brain connectivity alterations in frontotemporal dementia

SEDEÑO LUCAS; GARCIA ADOLFO; FITTIPALDI SOL; ABREVAYA SOFIA; GARCIA CORDERO, INDIRA; BAEZ SANDRA; DE LA FUENTE LAURA; TORRALVA TERESA; IBAÑEZ AGUSTIN

Congreso; 18th International Organization of Psychophysiology (IOP) World Congress; 2016

Introduction: Behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD)is characterized by marked functional connectivity alterations, whichmay represent a key biomarker contributing to the early diagnosis of thiscondition. However, to guarantee the clinical robustness of suchabnormalities, it is critical to assess them across heterogeneous contexts(due to differences in MRI equipment and acquisition parameters,clinical diagnostic teams and participants? financial and socio-culturalprofiles). To this end, we explored whether graph measures (a sensitiveapproach to study functional connectivity as a complex network ofinterconnected elements) could consistently distinguish bvFTD patientsfromcontrols. Crucially, to evaluate the specificity of altered connectivitypatterns in the former group, we replicated our study considering threeother neurological conditions.Compared to controls, bvFTD patients presented consistentalterations in all graph measures across centers. Also, thesemeasures discriminated bvFTD patients from the other diseasegroups. These patients differed from the FIS group in the integrationof connections and in local connectivity. Differences between bvFTDand both AD and PPA concerned anatomically distinct alterations ofnetwork centrality.