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Structural differences in impaired verbal fluency in essential tremor patients compared to healthy controls

OBJECTIVE: We wanted to identify differences in grey and white matter in essential tremor patients compared to controls in the non‐motor domain, using the example of impaired verbal fluency. BACKGROUND: A disturbance of verbal fluency in essential tremor patients compared to healthy controls is beha...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pelzer, Esther A., Nelles, Christian, Pedrosa, David J., Eggers, Carsten, Burghaus, Lothar, Melzer, Corina, Tittgemeyer, Marc, Timmermann, Lars
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5516598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28729930
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/brb3.722
Descripción
Sumario:OBJECTIVE: We wanted to identify differences in grey and white matter in essential tremor patients compared to controls in the non‐motor domain, using the example of impaired verbal fluency. BACKGROUND: A disturbance of verbal fluency in essential tremor patients compared to healthy controls is behaviorally well described. METHODS: Voxel‐based morphometry and tract‐based spatial statistics were used to analyze structural differences in grey and white matter in 19 essential tremor patients compared to 23 age‐ and gender‐matched controls. RESULTS: Several significant observations were made. (I) There was less grey matter in the predominantly right precuneus in the essential tremor group compared to controls [p < .001]. (II) In ET patients mean, axial, and radial diffusivity values broadly correlated with the tremor rating scale, pronounced in fronto‐parietal regions [p < .05]. (III) In ET patients there was a significant decline in fractional anisotropy values in the corpus callosum in the correlation with verbal fluency results [p < .05]; by inclusion of the tremor rating scale as covariate of no interest this significance was however diminished to a tendency (p < .1). No significant results were found in these within‐group correlations in grey matter analyses for ET patients (p > .05). CONCLUSION: The present results indicate that non‐motor symptoms such as verbal fluency (VBF) in ET have a structural substrate; their reproduction requires the integration of potential environmental plasticity effects, differentiation into individual clinical subtypes and a careful handling with methodological peculiarities of structural MR imaging.