Cerebral White Matter Integrity and Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Middle-aged Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

Early detection of brain abnormalities at the preclinical stage can be useful for developing preventive interventions to abate cognitive decline. We examined whether middle-aged type 2 diabetic patients show reduced white matter integrity in fiber tracts important for cognition and whether this abnormality is related to preestablished altered resting-state functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN). Diabetic and nondiabetic participants underwent diffusion tensor imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and cognitive assessment. Multiple diffusion measures were calculated using streamline tractography, and correlations with DMN functional connectivity were determined. Diabetic patients showed lower fractional anisotropy (FA) (a measure of white matter integrity) in the cingulum bundle and uncinate fasciculus. Control subjects showed stronger functional connectivity than patients between the posterior cingulate and both left fusiform and medial frontal gyri. FA of the cingulum bundle was correlated with functional connectivity between the posterior cingulate and medial frontal gyrus for combined groups. Thus, middle-aged patients with type 2 diabetes show white matter abnormalities that correlate with disrupted functional connectivity in the DMN, suggesting that common mechanisms may underlie structural and functional connectivity. Detecting brain abnormalities in middle age enables implementation of therapies to slow progression of neuropathology.     

Getting Close

You can’t understand most of the important things from a distance. You have to get close.” These words, from the grandmother of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, echoed around the first few sessions of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence’s annual All Partners Meeting this fall, which I attended to learn more about how bioethics might contribute to ongoing research in AI. Stevenson has cited distance as a factor contributing to mass incarceration in the United States: we readily mistreat the most vulnerable in society when we don’t witness the punishments we inflict on them. The lesson on proximity stays with me as I think about the growing interest in bioethics in addressing broader societal issues. Could our field also benefit from keeping proximity in mind? Where might bioethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence learn together? One place to start “getting close” is with the individuals and communities that innovation stands to impact.     

Sarkom der linken motorischen Region

Ohne Zusammenfassung