The investigation of resting-state functional connectivity of pulvinar in old age individuals and Parkinson’s patients

Abstract The pulvinar is largest thalamic nucleus and has been subdivided into anterior pulvinar (PuA), inferior pulvinar (PuI), medial pulvinar (PuM) and, lateral pulvinar (PuL). Although the function of pulvinar is well known, its role in neurodegenerative diseases is still unclear. We aimed to examine the functional connectivity of PuA, PuI, PuM and, PuL in healthy controls (HC) and patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Resting-state fMRI and T1 weighted images of 15 healthy control (HC), and 12 PD patients were used in this study. SPM12 and CONN software were used to preprocessing the imaging data using published pipelines. Seed based resting-state fMRI analyses were carried out to compare the functional connectivity changes between groups. Besides, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis was performed to compare gray matter volume differences between two groups. The bilateral PuI, PuL and PuM exhibited a decreased functional connectivity in the PD group compared to the HC group in the bilateral thalamus, posterior cingulate cortex, cerebellum, and brainstem. Moreover, pulvinar nuclei in each hemisphere had significantly smaller volume in the patients with PD compared to HC. This study highlights that the patients with PD have a smaller volume in pulvinar nuclei in each hemisphere compared to HC. The pulvinar showed less connectivity in the PD group compared to the HC, the diminished connectivity may be associated with hallucination, executive function, and working memory dysfunctions in PD.