Impaired acquisition rates of probabilistic associative learning in frontotemporal dementia is associated with fronto-striatal atrophy
Impaired acquisition rates of probabilistic associative learning in frontotemporal dementia is associated with fronto-striatal atrophy
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DOI：
10.1016/j.nicl.2012.11.001
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发表时间：
2013-01-01
影响因子：
4.2
通讯作者：
Hornberger, Michael
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Dalton, Marshall A.;Weickert, Thomas W.;Hornberger, Michael
额颞叶痴呆（FTD）通常被认为是一种伴有皮质变化的神经退行性疾病。然而，最近的结构成像发现强调，皮层下区域，特别是纹状体区域也受到 FTD 综合征的影响。纹状体病理学对 FTD 认知和行为变化的影响实际上尚未被探索。在当前的研究中，我们在一组 FTD 患者中采用了天气预报任务 (WPT)，这是一种利用纹状体功能障碍的概率学习任务。我们还通过基于体素的形态测量 (VBM) 对患者的行为表现与灰质萎缩进行回归，以确定灰质对 FTD 中 WPT 表现的贡献。根据之前的研究，我们预计纹状体和额叶萎缩与概率学习受损有关。我们的行为结果表明，患者总体表现与对照组相似，但是，在任务的前 30 次试验中，患者表现存在很大差异，这对于获取概率学习规则至关重要。对参与者前 30 项试验的表现进行协变的 VBM 分析表明，纹状体和额叶脑区域的萎缩与这些试验中的 WPT 表现相关。对前 30 项试验的表现进行更仔细的检查发现，尽管在后来的试验中与其他组实现了与其他组相同的概率学习水平，但 FTD 患者的一个亚组在 WPT 上的表现明显低于其余患者和对照组。额外的 VBM 分析显示，在前 30 项试验中早期概率学习较差的 FTD 患者亚组与其余 FTD 患者和对照组相比，表现出更大的纹状体萎缩。这些发现表明，额纹状体区域的完整性对于 FTD 中的概率学习很重要，尤其是纹状体的完整性，决定了习得学习率。因此，这些发现将对开发易于管理的概率学习任务版本产生影响，临床医生可以使用该任务来评估神经退行性综合征中的纹状体功能。 (C) 2012 年作者。由 Elsevier Inc. 出版。根据 CC BY-NC-SA 许可开放获取。
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is classically considered to be a neurodegenerative disease with cortical changes. Recent structural imaging findings, however, highlight that subcortical and in particular striatal regions are also affected in the FTD syndrome. The influence of striatal pathology on cognitive and behavioural changes in FTD is virtually unexplored. In the current study we employ the Weather Prediction Task (WPT), a probabilistic learning task which taps into striatal dysfunction, in a group of FTD patients. We also regressed the patients' behavioural performance with their grey matter atrophy via voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to identify the grey matter contributions to WPT performance in FTD. Based on previous studies we expected to see striatal and frontal atrophy to be involved in impaired probabilistic learning. Our behavioural results show that patients performed on a similar level to controls overall, however, there was a large variability of patient performance in the first 30 trials of the task, which are critical in the acquisition of the probabilistic learning rules. A VBM analysis covarying the performance for the first 30 trials across participants showed that atrophy in striatal but also frontal brain regions correlated with WPT performance in these trials. Closer inspection of performance across the first 30 trials revealed a subgroup of FTD patients that performed significantly poorly than the remaining patients and controls on the WPT, despite achieving the same level of probabilistic learning as the other groups in later trials. Additional VBM analyses revealed that the subgroup of FTD patients with poor early probabilistic learning in the first 30 trials showed greater striatal atrophy compared to the remaining FTD patients and controls. These findings suggest that the integrity of fronto-striatal regions is important for probabilistic learning in FTD, with striatal integrity in particular, determining the acquisition learning rate. These findings will therefore have implications for developing an easily administered version of the probabilistic learning task which can be used by clinicians to assess striatal functioning in neurodegenerative syndromes. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. Open access under CC BY-NC-SA license.