Background: Few works studied the directed whole-brain interaction between different brain regions of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Here, we investigated the whole-brain effective connectivity and studied the graph metrics associated with AD.

Methods: Large-scale Granger causality analysis was conducted to explore abnormal whole-brain effective connectivity of patients with AD. Moreover, graph-theoretical metrics including smallworldness, assortativity, and hierarchy, were computed from the effective connectivity network. Statistical analysis identified the aberrant network properties of AD subjects when compared against healthy controls.

中文翻译：

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使用格兰杰因果关系和图论研究阿尔茨海默病的定向网络缺陷

背景：很少有研究研究阿尔茨海默病 (AD) 不同大脑区域之间的定向全脑相互作用。在这里，我们研究了全脑有效连接并研究了与 AD 相关的图形指标。

方法：采用大规模格兰杰因果关系分析，探讨 AD 患者全脑有效连通性异常。此外，包括小世界性、分类性和层次结构在内的图论指标是从有效连接网络计算出来的。与健康对照相比，统计分析确定了 AD 受试者的异常网络特性。