Apathy is one of the core symptoms in behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), and increases patient's morbidity and caregiver's distress. In this study, we applied a graph theoretical analysis (GTA) to analyze the topological properties of cerebral blood flow (CBF) network in 64 bvFTD patients with and without apathy (47 bvFTD-apathy and 17 bvFTD-woapathy, respectively), and 20 normal controls (NCs) based on single photon emission tomography (SPECT). Compared with the NCs, both the bvFTD groups preserved global function and typical features of small-worldness, but exhibited the loss of hubs mainly distributed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Compared with bvFTD-woapathy, the bvFTD-apathy group exhibited additional loss of hubs in the ventral PFC areas, middle cingulate cortex, limbic and paralimbic system, and subcortical regions, but recruited hubs in the areas of angular gyrus, precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex. Overall, our findings support the hypothesis that the disruption of frontostriatal circuit is associated with apathy in bvFTD.

中文翻译：

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行为变异型额颞叶痴呆伴或不伴冷漠患者脑血流网络的改变

冷漠是额颞叶痴呆（bvFTD）行为变异的核心症状之一，会增加患者的发病率和照顾者的痛苦。在这项研究中，我们应用图论分析 (GTA) 来分析 64 名有和没有冷漠的 bvFTD 患者（分别为 47 bvFTD-冷漠和 17 bvFTD-woapathy）和 20基于单光子发射断层扫描 (SPECT) 的正常对照 (NC)。与 NCs 相比，bvFTD 组都保留了全局功能和小世界性的典型特征，但表现出主要分布在前额叶皮层 (PFC) 的中枢丢失。与 bvFTD-woapathy 相比，bvFTD-apathy 组在腹侧 PFC 区域、中扣带皮层、边缘和旁边缘系统中表现出额外的枢纽损失，和皮层下区域，但在角回、楔前叶和后扣带回皮层区域招募了枢纽。总体而言，我们的研究结果支持额纹状体回路的破坏与 bvFTD 中的冷漠相关的假设。