Small-World Properties in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Early Alzheimer’s Disease: A Cortical Thickness MRI Study

Figure 4

Controls (blue), MCI (green), and early AD patients (red) all showed a small-world characteristics in three population with reduction of 𝛾 (≫1) in (a) and reduction of 𝜆 (≈1) in (b) with the reduction of sparsity. AD patients showed lowest absolute clustering coefficient (a), indicating a reduction of local efficiency in AD patients. MCI patients showed lower relative cluster coefficient compared to controls (a), shortest relative path lengths (b), and lowest absolute path lengths (d) compared to AD and controls, indicating a compensatory mechanism with global efficiency in MCI stables. Error bar denotes standard deviation.