PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Sygrid van der Zee AU - Martijn Muller AU - Prabesh Kanel AU - Nicolaas Bohnen TI - <sup>18</sup>F-FEOBV vesicular acetylcholine transporter network correlates of cognitive sub-domain functioning in Parkinson’s disease. DP - 2020 May 01 TA - Journal of Nuclear Medicine PG - 337--337 VI - 61 IP - supplement 1 4099 - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/61/supplement_1/337.short 4100 - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/61/supplement_1/337.full SO - J Nucl Med2020 May 01; 61 AB - 337Objectives: The cholinergic system plays an important role in the cognitive impairment syndrome of Parkinson's disease (PD). Previous acetylcholinesterase PET imaging studies found memory, attention and executive function correlates of global cortical cholinergic losses in PD. Vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT) 18F-fluoroethoxybenzovesamicol (18F-FEOBV) PET allows for more accurate topographic assessment of cholinergic changes not only in the cortex but also in high binding subcortical areas, such as the basal ganglia. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between cognitive functioning and regional cerebral VAChT binding using 18F-FEOBV PET. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a total of 87 non-demented PD patients (age 67.9±7.6 years, 77% male, median (IQR) Hoehn &amp; Yahr 2.5 (1.0), disease duration 5.8±6.0 years) underwent neuropsychological assessment and cholinergic PET imaging. Z-scores for each cognitive domain (memory, attention, executive functions, language and visuospatial abilities) were determined using an age-, gender- and educational level-matched healthy control group. Correlations between domain specific cognitive functioning and both global and regional cerebral vesicular cholinergic transporter binding were examined. Results: Global cholinergic binding correlated most robustly with domain scores of memory, attention and executive functioning (all p &lt; 0.001). Voxel-based whole brain analysis demonstrated specific but partially overlapping topographic cholinergic profiles for each of the cognitive domains. Overlapping spatial cholinergic correlates of memory, attention and executive functions included the cingulate cortex, insula and operculum, hippocampus and thalamus bilaterally (p&lt;0 .01, corrected for multiple comparisons). An unexpected finding was the involvement of the visual thalamus (lateral geniculate nucleus) in most domains, suggesting a cholinergic role in visual processing in the modulation of memory, attention, and executive functioning. Conclusions: Our results confirm and expand on previous observations of cholinergic system involvement in memory, attention and executive functions. Partial topographic overlap of cholinergic system correlates across these different cognitive domains, may reflect a shared cholinergic network function sub-serving overall cognitive functioning. Funding: Study funded by National Institutes of Health (P01 NS015655, RO1 NS070856, P50 NS091856), Department of Veterans Affairs grant (I01 RX001631), and the Michael J. Fox Foundation.