Non-motor symptoms, including abnormalities in cognition, mental behaviors, autonomic nerves and sensory perception, have the greatest effect on the quality of in Parkinson's disease patient life.
Voxel-based morphometry can be used to quantitatively compare structural differences and func-tional changes of gray matter in subjects. According to a study, Gray matter images of 32 Parkinson's disease patients and 25 healthy controls were compared using voxel-based morphometry to investigate the correlation between brain structural loss and non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease.
Comparison of gray matter images showed that gray matter volume was significantly diminished in patients with Parkinson's disease compared with normal controls, including the bilateral temporal lobe, bilateral occipital lobe, bilateral parietal lobe, bilateral frontal lobe, bilateral insular lobe, bilateral parahippocampal gyrus, bilateral amygdale, right uncus, and right posterior lobe of cerebellum.
These findings, published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 27, 2013), indicate that voxel-based morphometry can accurately and quantitatively assess the loss of gray matter volume in patients with Parkinson's disease, and provide essential neuroimaging evidence for multisystem pathological mechanisms involved in Parkinson's disease.
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