Disruption of macroscale functional network organisation in patients with frontotemporal dementia

Abstract

Neurodegenerative dementias have a profound impact on higher-order cognitive and behavioural functions. Investigating macroscale functional networks through cortical gradients provides valuable insights into the neurodegenerative dementia process and overall brain function. This approach allows for the exploration of unimodal-multimodal differentiation and the intricate interplay between functional brain networks. We applied cortical gradients mapping to resting-state functional MRI data of patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) (behavioural-bvFTD, non-fluent and semantic) and healthy controls. In healthy controls, the principal gradient maximally distinguished sensorimotor from default-mode network (DMN) and the secondary gradient visual from salience network (SN). In all FTD variants, the principal gradient’s unimodal-multimodal differentiation was disrupted. The secondary gradient, however, showed widespread disruptions impacting the interactions among all networks specifically in bvFTD, while semantic and non-fluent variants exhibited more focal alterations in limbic and sensorimotor networks. Additionally, the visual network showed responsive and/or compensatory changes in all patients. Importantly, these disruptions extended beyond atrophy distribution and related to symptomatology in patients with bvFTD. In conclusion, optimal brain function requires networks to operate in a segregated yet collaborative manner. In FTD, our findings indicate a collapse and loss of differentiation between networks not solely explained by atrophy. These specific cortical gradients’ fingerprints could serve as a functional signature for identifying early changes in neurodegenerative diseases or potential compensatory processes.