Transcranial ultrasound pulse stimulation reduces cortical atrophy in Alzheimer's patients: A follow-up study

Tudor Popescu, Cyril Pernet, Roland Beisteiner, Tudor Popescu, Cyril Pernet, Roland Beisteiner

Abstract

Introduction: Ultrasound for the brain is a revolutionary therapeutic concept. The first clinical data indicate that 2-4 weeks of therapy with transcranial pulse stimulation (TPS) improve functional networks and cognitive performance of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients for up to 3 months. No data currently exist on possible benefits concerning brain morphology, namely the cortical atrophy characteristic of AD.

Methods: We performed a pre-/post-therapy analysis of cortical thickness in a group of N = 17 AD patients.

Results: We found a significant correlation between neuropsychological improvement and cortical thickness increase in AD-critical brain areas.

Discussion: AD patients who benefit from TPS appear to manifest reduced cortical atrophy within the default mode network in particular, whose memory-related subsystems are believed to be disrupted in AD. TPS may therefore hold promise as a new add-on therapy for AD.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; brain stimulation; cortical atrophy; cortical thickness; default mode network; ultrasound.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

© 2021 The Authors. Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Brain–behavior correlations. A, Regions of interest—namely left superior parietal lobule (SPL) and left precuneus—where a significant correlation (plotted in panel [B]) was observed between pre‐to‐post change in cortical thickness and in neuropsychological scores (corrected total score [CTS]). The two regions of interest are highlighted with dotted black contours on lateral and medial views of the DKT atlas parcellation; base image from the Mindboggle project (www.dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/mindboggle101). B, Data points in the scatter plot represent patients (N = 17; SPL: green triangles; precuneus: purple squares). Data points sharing the same x value are horizontally jittered by up to 0.25 units to aid visualization. Vertical/horizontal dotted gray lines correspond to no pre‐to‐post change in terms of neuropsychological score/cortical thickness. “Δ” in the axis labels refers to pre‐to‐post‐TPS change. C, Distribution of neuropsychological (CTS) scores, pre‐ and post‐TPS. Dots represent individual patients, with gray lines connecting values at pre and at post. Horizontal red lines indicate group means. *P < .05; **P < .01

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