Depression is the most common non-motor symptom in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) with unknown mechanisms, but the diagnostic criteria of PD with depression (PDD) are not uniform.
The aim of the study was to investigate interhemispheric interactions between PDD patients and patients with PD without depression (PDND).
The voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) combined with the seed-based method was used to investigate intrinsic resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) in 33 PDD patients, 60 PDND, and 47 healthy controls (HCs).
PDD patients exhibited a decreased VMHC in the bilateral medial frontal gyrus and paracentral lobule (MFG/PCL) than did PDND patients. Parkinson’s disease with depression had a decreased VMHC in the bilateral precentral gyrus than had PDND and HC (
Our findings indicated that the occurrence of depression in Parkinson’s disease is associated with the dysfunctional connectivity from the MFG/PCL to the contralateral SMA, which could be used as potential neuroimaging markers for the diagnosis of depression in PD patients.