Multi-modal latent factor exploration of atrophy, cognitive and tau heterogeneity in Alzheimer's disease

Publication date: Available online 22 July 2019Source: NeuroImageAuthor(s): Nanbo Sun, Elizabeth C. Mormino, Jianzhong Chen, Mert R. Sabuncu, BT Thomas Yeo, Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging InitiativeAbstractIndividuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia exhibit significant heterogeneity across clinical symptoms, atrophy patterns, and spatial distribution of Tau deposition. Most previous studies of AD heterogeneity have focused on atypical clinical subtypes, defined subtypes with a single modality, or restricted their analyses to a priori brain regions and cognitive tests. Here, we considered a data-driven hierarchical Bayesian model to identify latent factors from atrophy patterns and cognitive deficits simultaneously, thus exploiting the rich dimensionality within each modality. Unlike most previous studies, our model allows each factor to be expressed to varying degrees within an individual, in order to reflect potential multiple co-existing pathologies.By applying our model to ADNI-GO/2 AD dementia participants, we found three atrophy-cognitive factors. The first factor was associated with medial temporal lobe atrophy, episodic memory deficits and disorientation to time/place (“MTL-Memory”). The second factor was associated with lateral temporal atrophy and language deficits (“Lateral Temporal-Language”). The third factor was associated with atrophy in posterior bilateral cortex, and visuospatial executive function deficits (“Posterior Cortical-Executive”)...

Source: NeuroImage - July 23, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research