EEG resting-state networks in Alzheimer’s disease associated with clinical symptoms

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neuropsychiatric disease affecting many elderly people and is characterized by progressive cognitive impairment of memory, visuospatial, and executive functions. As the elderly population is growing, the number of AD patients is increasing considerably. There is currently growing interest in determining AD’s cognitive dysfunction markers. We used exact low-resolution-brain-electromagnetic-tomography independent-component-analysis (eLORETA-ICA) to assess activities of five electroencephalography resting-state-networks (EEG-RSNs) in 90 drug-free AD patients and 11 drug-free patients with mild-cognitive-impairment due to AD (ADMCI). Compared to 147 healthy subjects, the AD/ADMCI patients showed significantly decreased activities in the memory network and occipital alpha activity, where the age difference between the AD/ADMCI and healthy groups was corrected by linear regression analysis. Furthermore, the age-corrected EEG-RSN activities showed correlations with cognitive function test scores in AD/ADMCI. In particular, decreased memory network activity showed correlations with worse total cognitive scores for both Mini-Mental-State-Examination (MMSE) and Alzheimer’s Disease-Assessment-Scale-cognitive-component-Japanese version (ADAS-J cog) including worse sub-scores for orientation, registration, repetition, word recognition and ideational praxis. Our results indicate that AD affects specific EEG-RSNs and deteriorated network activity causes symptoms. Overall, eLORETA-ICA is a useful, non-invasive tool for assessing EEG-functional-network activities and provides better understanding of the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the disease.