Altered Granger Causal Connectivity of Resting-State Neural Networks in Patients With Leukoaraiosis-Associated Cognitive Impairment-A Cross-Sectional Study.

The purpose of this study was to provide an imaging reference for the measurement of disease progression, as well as to reveal the pathogenesis of leukoaraiosis (LA). Eighty-seven subjects were divided into three groups: LA patients with vascular dementia (LA-VaD) (20 subjects: 14 female, 6 male), LA patients with vascular cognitive impairment nondementia (LA-VCIND) (32 subjects: 14 male, 18 female), and normal controls (NC) (35 subjects: 14 male, 21 female). A multivariate Granger causality analysis (mGCA) was applied to the resting-state networks (RSNs) to evaluate the possible effective connectivity within the resting-state networks retrieved by independent component analysis (ICA) from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data.