Abstract:

Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging, as a method of non-invasive visual imaging and convenient data acquisition, has become an important measurement to explore brain functional variation in Alzheimer's disease and its symptomatic predementia phase. Recent studies demonstrated that patients with mild cognitive impairment have already showed the alteration of resting state networks, whereas more diffusion alteration was found in Alzheimer patients’ networks. Specifically, with the pathological progression, the functional connectivity of patients’ default mode network is gradually decreasing, whereas the connectivity of fronto-parietal network increased at first while decreased afterwards. In addition, the alteration of brain network and brain structure cannot simply be considered which happened first. More probably, the interactions between them bring up the cognitive impairment gradually. Future research needs to explore the sensitive neuro-pathway along the pathological progression, and further investigate the potential resting brain network biomarkers for clinical diagnosis and monitoring.

Key words: Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, large-scale brain network, resting state, functional magnetic resonance imaging