An exploration of distinguishing subjective cognitive decline and mild cognitive impairment based on resting-state prefrontal functional connectivity assessed by functional near-infrared spectroscopy

Purpose: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has shown feasibility in evaluating cognitive function and brain functional connectivity (FC). Therefore, this fNIRS study aimed to develop a screening method for subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) based on resting-state prefrontal FC and neuropsychological tests via machine learning.

Methods: Functional connectivity data measured by fNIRS were collected from 55 normal controls (NCs), 80 SCD individuals, and 111 MCI individuals. Differences in FC were analyzed among the groups. FC strength and neuropsychological test scores were extracted as features to build classification and predictive models through machine learning. Model performance was assessed based on accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, and area under the curve (AUC) with 95% confidence interval (CI) values.

Results: Statistical analysis revealed a trend toward compensatory enhanced prefrontal FC in SCD and MCI individuals. The models showed a satisfactory ability to differentiate among the three groups, especially those employing linear discriminant analysis, logistic regression, and support vector machine. Accuracies of 94.9% for MCI vs. NC, 79.4% for MCI vs. SCD, and 77.0% for SCD vs. NC were achieved, and the highest AUC values were 97.5% (95% CI: 95.0%-100.0%) for MCI vs. NC, 83.7% (95% CI: 77.5%-89.8%) for MCI vs. SCD, and 80.6% (95% CI: 72.7%-88.4%) for SCD vs. NC.

Conclusion: The developed screening method based on resting-state prefrontal FC measured by fNIRS and machine learning may help predict early-stage cognitive impairment.