The Study Of Cerebellum Size And Its Correlation With Congnitive Functions In Mild Cognitive Impairment And Alzheimer's Disease Patients

ObjectiveTo study the correlation between cognitive functions and volumetric measurements of cerebellum in people with mild cognitive impairment(MCI) and Alzheimer's disease(AD).MethodsTotally 18 patients with AD,18 patients with MCI and 18 cognitive normal cases were enrolled in the study. The diagnosis of MC1 was made by Petersen's criteria,and the diagnosis of AD was made according to three steps,the first is mini-mental state examination,the second is diagnostic and statistical manual,fourth version,the third is the national institute of neurological and communicative disorders and stroke-Alzheimer's disease and related disorders association and healthy people with matched age, gender were enrolled as controls. They had no history of neurologic and endocrinic diseases, no family history of stroke or dementia and no mental problems.Mini-mental state examination tests were performed on all participants to confirm their cognitive status.All participants were scanned using three-dimensional spoiled gradient-recalled echoand the conventional magnetic resonanse imaging sequences including T1-Weighted imaging and T2-Weighted imaging.Cerebellar tracing was performed using the manual segmentation function implemented in BRAINS2 software,the cerebellum was divided into four substructures(anterior lobe,superior posterior lobe,inferior posterior lobe and corpus medullare).Total cerebellar volume and the volumes of cerebellar substructures among three groups were compared and the relevance was appraised between cerebellar volume and scores on MMSE.Statistical package for the social sciences for Windows version 14 was used for statistical analysis,p-values less than 0.05 were considered significant.Results1,There were no significant differences with respect to age,gender and educational level among all three group with the MCI subjects ranking in between AD patients and cognitive normal.cases,but mean MMSE scores differed significantly among all three groups.2,There was no significant difference in total cerebellar volume among all three group.3,Superior posterior lobe (P<0.01) and inferior posterior lobe (P＜0.01) of cerebellar were significantly smaller in AD patients when compared to cognitive normal cases and MCI patients,but anterior lobe and corpus medullare were not small.4,There were no significant differences in cerebellar substructures volume between MCI and cognitive normal cases.5,In AD patients,the MMSE score was found to be significantly associated with the volume of inferior posterior lobe according to Pearson's moment correlation(r=0.586, p=0.021).ConclutionsNeural anatomy, physiology and other disciplines of studies have shown that the human cerebellum is not only responsible for motor function,but also responsible for sensation, memory, learning, emotional, linguistic and other cognitive activities. It is still rare at present about the structural imaging of cerebellum. This study found that superior posterior lobe and.inferior posterior lobe of cerebellar were significantly smaller in AD patients when compared to cognitive normal cases or MCI patients, inferior posterior lobe volumes were associated with poorer cognitive performance as determined by the MMSE in AD patients. Therefore infer cognitive performance is closely related to posterior lobe of cerebellar in AD patients, but because the sample sizes of this study is limited, further double-blind study is required to confirm our inference.