Relevance of brain lesion location for cognition in vascular mild cognitive impairment

• Published in: NeuroImage clinical 2019-01, Vol.22, p.101789-101789, Article 101789
• Main Authors: Giorgio, Antonio, Di Donato, Ilaria, De Leucio, Alessandro, Zhang, Jian, Salvadori, Emilia, Poggesi, Anna, Diciotti, Stefano, Cosottini, Mirco, Ciulli, Stefano, Inzitari, Domenico, Pantoni, Leonardo, Mascalchi, Mario, Federico, Antonio, Dotti, Maria Teresa, De Stefano, Nicola
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Cerebral Small Vessel Diseases - diagnostic imaging; Cerebral Small Vessel Diseases - pathology; Cognitive Dysfunction - diagnostic imaging; Cognitive Dysfunction - pathology; Cognitive Dysfunction - physiopathology; Female; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Neuroimaging - methods; Regular; White Matter - diagnostic imaging; White Matter - pathology
• ISSN: 2213-1582; 2213-1582
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2019.101789

Vascular mild cognitive impairment (VMCI) is a potentially transitional state between normal aging and vascular dementia. The presence of macroscopic white matter lesions (WML) of moderate or severe extension on brain MRI is the hallmark of the VMCI. To assess the clinical relevance of the frequency of WML in patients with VMCI independently of total lesion volume (LV). In this multicenter study, we included 110 patients with VMCI (age: 74.3 ± 6.6 years; sex: 60 women). Cognitive assessment was performed with the VMCI-Tuscany Neuropsychological Battery, which allowed to identify four VMCI groups: amnestic single (n = 9) and multi-domain (n = 76), non-amnestic single- (n = 10) and multi-domain (n = 15). Distribution and frequency of WML on MRI FLAIR images were evaluated with lesion probability map (LPM). Voxelwise statistics was performed with nonparametric permutation tests, controlling for age, sex, slice thickness, center, magnetic field strength, total LV and head size (p