Daniel Han-en Chang1, Huali Wang2, 3, Na Zhang2, 3, Huishu Yuan4, Xin Yu2, 3, L. Tugan Muftuler5, Min-Ying Su1
1Tu & Yuen Center for Functional Onco-Imaging, Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, United States; 2Dementia Care and Research Center, Peking University Institute of Mental Health, Beijing, China; 3Key Laboratory for Mental Health, Ministry of Health (Peking University), Beijing, China; 4Department of Radiology, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing, China; 5Department of Neurosurgery and Biophysics, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States
A significant portion of elderly patients with late-onset depression (LOD) are cognitively impaired. However, a number LOD patients do not have sustained cognitive impairment after remission following treatment, and thus it may be possible that neuroimaging can differentiate between these patients by examining the underlying affected neural pathways. FSL's tract-based spatial statistics was used to compare FA and MD values in a voxel-wise manner among cognitively-impaired LOD subjects, cognitively-normal LOD subjects, and normal control subjects. Cognitively-impaired LOD subjects were found to have decreased FA and increased MD values when compared to both cognitively-normal LOD subjects and normal control subjects.