Neocortical atrophy in Machado-Joseph disease: A longitudinal neuroimaging study

Abstract

Background/Purpose: Previous imaging studies in the Machado-Joseph disease (MJD/SCA3) have mostly concentrated on the cerebellum and brainstem. Our goal was to perform a whole brain longitudinal evaluation. Methods: We included 45 patients and 51 controls, who underwent two brain magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (mean interval of 12.5 ± 1.5 months). We used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and the MarsBar analysis toolbox to extract grey matter density (GMD) values from regions of interest. We used a linear regression model and a general linear model to correlate GMD with clinical markers, and paired t-test for the longitudinal evaluation. Results: We observed decreased GMD (P