Neuropsychiatric symptoms and functional connectivity of neurotransmitter producing nuclei in MCI and mild dementia in Alzheimer’s disease

There is evidence that neurotransmitter producing nuclei are impaired in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recent studies suggest that locus coeruleus and ventral tegmental area, main producers of noradrenaline and dopamine, respectively, are affected before the onset of amyloid‐beta deposition in the entorhinal cortex. Dysfunction of these nuclei seem to contribute especially to the manifestation of neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS), which tend to aggravate as the disease progresses. As such, we aimed to correlate the functional connectivity (FC) maps of basal nucleus of Meynert (BNM), locus coeruleus (LC) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) to NPS in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild dementia in Alzheimer’s disease.