Wenjun Li1, Gang Chen1, Xiaolin
Liu1, Chunming Xie1,2, Guanyu Chen1, Barney
Douglas Ward1, Joseph Goveas3, Jennifer Jones4,
Malgorzta Franczak4, Piero Antuono4, Shi-Jiang Li1,3
1Biophysics, Medical
College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; 2School of
Clinical Medicine, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, People's
Republic of; 3Psychiatry & Behavior Medicine, Medical College
of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; 4Neurology, Medical
College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States
Although atrophy is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimers disease (AD), the relationship between brain atrophy and system level dysfunction in functional connectivity networks is not well understood. While severe neurodegeneration in late stage of AD are likely to result in functional alterations, the extent to whether the morphological changes lead the functional changes or vice-versa in mild stage of the disease is still unclear. Our current study is aimed to investigate how functional networks evolve among brain regions involving atrophy in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD.