Identifying fiber tracts strategic for cognitive impairments in cerebral small vessel disease with harmonized diffusion MRI

Small vessel disease (SVD) is a worldwide leading cause of dementia. Damage to white matter tracts is a key mechanism through which SVD impacts cognition. In this work, we leverage a large multicenter dataset of patients with SVD to investigate which white matter tracts are strategic in SVD, that is, robustly associated with cognitive decline. Our early results show that the corpus callosum, superior longitudinal fasciculus and thalamo parietal tracts were the most associated to processing speed, verbal memory and executive function, respectively. Tract-based measures explained additional variance (2-5%) as compared to whole brain measures.