THERE ARE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CLINICAL COGNITIVE TESTS AND SUBCORTICAL STRUCTURES OF THE BRAIN IN THE PARKINSON’S DISEASE PATIENTS WITH MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT: A BRAIN SEGMENTATION STUDY

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Background. The relation between the function and structure of the brain is under interest of the scientist. This relation gives information to the clinician to diagnose or monitor the neurodegenerative diseases. However, there are limited studies on clinical tests and structural analysis of the brain. Aim. In the present study, we evaluated the correlation between the cognitive tests and size of the subcortical structures. Material and Methods. 26 Parkinson’s disease patients with mild cognitive impairment (7 females and 19 males) included to the study. The mean age of the patients (±SD) is 67.1±10.3 years. Cognitive tests were done in the clinic and the structural analysis of the subcortical structures were done on magnetic resonance (MR) images. Brain segmentation was done using the BrainSuite software. The correlation analysis is done between the cognitive tests and the size of the hippocampus, amygdala, caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus and nucleus accumbens of the right hemisphere. Results and Discussion. The size of the hippocampus, amygdala, caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus and nucleus accumbens were 3770.2±483.1, 2874.2±506.7, 3007.0±1115.8, 5009.5±912.7 and 1876.9±327.4 cm3 in the right hemisphere. The hippocampus was bigger in the patients who had high SBST learning mark (r=0.555; p=0.003). The amygdala was bigger in the patients who had high verbal memory learning score (r=0.420; p=0.03). There were positive correlations between size of the caudate nucleus and fruit&human (r=0.454; p=0.02), stroop error (r=0.457; p=0.02). There was also negative correlation between the nucleus accumbens and UPDRS (r=-0.446; p=0.02). There was not any correlation between the size of the globus pallidus and the cognitive tests. Conclusions. Our findings revealed that there are strong correlations between the cognitive tests and the size of the subcortical structures. Our findings are also reveals that the above mentioned cognitive test could be accepted as powerful tests in clinic.