Table 1.
Demographic and clinical characteristics.
Figure 1.
Regions of the white matter skeleton with a significant negative correlation between FA and the composite measure of systemic inflammation are shown in dark blue (controlling for age, sex, level of education, and presence of WMHs).
(A) Axial (radiological convention), (B) sagittal (left to right) and (C) coronal (posterior to anterior) views are presented for better localization. In order to ensure high contrast, the same dark blue color is assigned to all voxels with p<0.05 after correction for multiple comparisons. Mean FA maps of the IIT Human Brain Atlas (v.3) (grayscale), and the corresponding white matter skeleton (green color) are shown in the background. No part of the white matter skeleton showed a significant positive correlation between FA and the composite measure of inflammation.
Figure 2.
Plot of the mean FA (after correction for the effects of age, sex, level of education, and presence of WMHs) of the corpus callosum voxels that showed a significant negative correlation between FA and systemic inflammation in voxel-wise analysis (Fig. 1), as a function of the composite measure of systemic inflammation.
Figure 3.
Results of probabilistic tractography in the HARDI template of the IIT Human Brain Atlas (v.3) for a seed region covering the mid-sagittal section of the corpus callosum cluster that showed significant negative correlation between FA and systemic inflammation.
(A) Location of the seed used for probabilistic tractography, overlaid on the mid-sagittal slice of the mean T1-weighted template of the atlas. (B–E) Three-dimensional renderings of track-density maps of fibers that cross through the body and isthmus of the corpus callosum, where FA was shown to be significantly negatively correlated with the composite measure of systemic inflammation. (B) View of the lateral side of the left hemisphere. (C) View of the lateral side of the right hemisphere. (D) View of the medial aspect of the right hemisphere. (E) View of the medial aspect of the left hemisphere.
Table 2.
Association of cognitive performance with systemic inflammation and mean FA from the region of the corpus callosum that showed significant negative correlation of FA with inflammation in the voxel-wise TBSS analysis.