Investigating the Anatomy and Microstructure of the Dentato-rubro-thalamic and Subthalamo-ponto-cerebellar Tracts in Parkinson's Disease

Lipp, Ilona, Mole, Jilu Princy, Subramanian, Leena, Linden, David E. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5638-9292 and Metzler-Baddeley, Claudia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8646-1144 2022. Investigating the Anatomy and Microstructure of the Dentato-rubro-thalamic and Subthalamo-ponto-cerebellar Tracts in Parkinson's Disease. Frontiers in Neurology 13 , 793693. 10.3389/fneur.2022.793693

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Abstract

Cerebellar-thalamic connections play a central role in deep brain stimulation-based treatment of tremor syndromes. Here, we used diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) tractography to delineate the main cerebellar peduncles as well as two main white matter tracts that connect the cerebellum with the thalamus, the dentato-rubro-thalamic tract (DRTT) and the subthalamo-ponto-cerebellar tract (SPCT). We first developed a reconstruction protocol in young healthy adults with high-resolution diffusion imaging data and then demonstrate feasibility of transferring this protocol to clinical studies using standard diffusion MRI data from a cohort of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and their matched healthy controls. The tracts obtained closely corresponded to the previously described anatomical pathways and features of the DRTT and the SPCT. Second, we investigated the microstructure of these tracts with fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (RD), and hindrance modulated orientational anisotropy (HMOA) in patients with PD and healthy controls. By reducing dimensionality of both the microstructural metrics and the investigated cerebellar and cerebellar-thalamic tracts using principal component analyses, we found global differences between patients with PD and controls, suggestive of higher fractional anisotropy, lower radial diffusivity, and higher hindrance modulated orientational anisotropy in patients. However, separate analyses for each of the tracts did not yield any significant differences. Our findings contribute to the characterization of the distinct anatomical connections between the cerebellum and the diencephalon. Microstructural differences between patients and controls in the cerebellar pathways suggest involvement of these structures in PD, complementing previous functional and diffusion imaging studies.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC)
Additional Information:	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).
Publisher:	Frontiers Media
ISSN:	1664-2295
Funders:	Wellcome Trust
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 March 2022
Date of Acceptance:	7 February 2022
Last Modified:	09 Sep 2023 11:32
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/148364

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