PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Robert L. Barry
AU  - Suma Babu
AU  - Sheeba Arnold Anteraper
AU  - Christina Triantafyllou
AU  - Boris Keil
AU  - Olivia E. Rowe
AU  - D. Rangaprakash
AU  - Sabrina Paganoni
AU  - Robert Lawson
AU  - Christina Dheel
AU  - Paul M. Cernasov
AU  - Bruce R. Rosen
AU  - Eva-Maria Ratai
AU  - Nazem Atassi
TI  - Ultra-high field (7T) functional magnetic resonance imaging in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: a pilot study
AID  - 10.1101/2020.12.02.408278
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.12.02.408278
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/28/2020.12.02.408278.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/02/28/2020.12.02.408278.full
AB  - Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system that results in a progressive loss of motor function and ultimately death. It is critical, yet also challenging, to develop non-invasive biomarkers to identify, localize, measure and/or track biological mechanisms implicated in ALS. Such biomarkers may also provide clues to identify potential molecular targets for future therapeutic trials. Herein we report on a pilot study involving twelve participants with ALS and nine age-matched healthy controls who underwent high-resolution resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging at an ultra-high field of 7 Tesla. A group-level whole-brain analysis revealed a disruption in long-range functional connectivity between the superior sensorimotor cortex (in the precentral gyrus) and bilateral cerebellar lobule VI. Post hoc analyses using atlas-derived left and right cerebellar lobule VI revealed decreased functional connectivity in ALS participants that predominantly mapped to bilateral postcentral and precentral gyri. Cerebellar lobule VI is a transition zone between anterior motor networks and posterior non-motor networks in the cerebellum, and is associated with a wide range of key functions including complex motor and cognitive processing tasks. Our observation of the involvement of cerebellar lobule VI adds to the growing number of studies implicating the cerebellum in ALS. Future avenues of scientific investigation should consider how high-resolution imaging at 7T may be leveraged to visualize differences in functional connectivity disturbances in various genotypes and phenotypes of ALS along the ALS-frontotemporal dementia spectrum.Competing Interest StatementChristina Triantafyllou, PhD, is currently employed by Siemens Healthineers. Nazem Atassi, MD, PhD, is currently employed by Sanofi Genzyme. All other authors declare no competing interests related to this work.