This article requires a subscription to view the full text. If you have a subscription you may use the login form below to view the article. Access to this article can also be purchased.
Abstract
Objective: Cerebral small vessel disease is the most common cause of vascular cognitive impairment and typically manifests with slowed processing speed. We investigated the impact of lesion location on processing speed in age-related small vessel disease.
Methods: A total of 584 community-dwelling elderly underwent brain MRI followed by segmentation of white matter hyperintensities. Processing speed was determined by the timed measure of the Trail Making Test part B. The impact of the location of white matter hyperintensities was assessed by voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping and graph-based statistical models on regional lesion volumes in major white matter tracts.
Results: Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping identified multiple voxel clusters where the presence of white matter hyperintensities was associated with slower performance on the Trail Making Test part B. Clusters were located bilaterally in the forceps minor and anterior thalamic radiation. Region of interest–based Bayesian network analyses on lesion volumes within major white matter tracts depicted the same tracts as direct predictors for an impaired Trail Making Test part B performance.
Conclusions: Our findings highlight damage to frontal interhemispheric and thalamic projection fiber tracts harboring frontal-subcortical neuronal circuits as a predictor for processing speed performance in age-related small vessel disease.
GLOSSARY
- ASPFS=
- Austrian Stroke Prevention Family Study;
- ASPS=
- Austrian Stroke Prevention Study;
- ATR=
- anterior thalamic radiation;
- Fmin=
- forceps minor;
- SVD=
- small vessel disease;
- TMT-B=
- Trail Making Test, matrix B;
- VCI=
- vascular cognitive impairment;
- VLSM=
- voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping;
- WMH=
- white matter hyperintensities
Footnotes
↵* These authors contributed equally to this work.
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.
Editorial, page 1940
Supplemental data at Neurology.org
- Received September 30, 2013.
- Accepted in final form January 21, 2014.
- © 2014 American Academy of Neurology
AAN Members
We have changed the login procedure to improve access between AAN.com and the Neurology journals. If you are experiencing issues, please log out of AAN.com and clear history and cookies. (For instructions by browser, please click the instruction pages below). After clearing, choose preferred Journal and select login for AAN Members. You will be redirected to a login page where you can log in with your AAN ID number and password. When you are returned to the Journal, your name should appear at the top right of the page.
AAN Non-Member Subscribers
Purchase access
Letters: Rapid online correspondence
REQUIREMENTS
You must ensure that your Disclosures have been updated within the previous six months. Please go to our Submission Site to add or update your Disclosure information.
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.
You May Also be Interested in
Differences in Age-related Retinal and Cortical Atrophy Rates in Multiple Sclerosis
Prof. Massimo Filippi and Dr. Paolo Preziosa
► Watch
Topics Discussed
Alert Me
Recommended articles
Gray and white matter changes linking cerebral small vessel disease to gait disturbances
Understanding brain function through small vessel disease
Multi-shell Diffusion MRI Models for White Matter Characterization in Cerebral Small Vessel Disease
Vascular and dopaminergic contributors to mild parkinsonian signs in older adults