Abstract: Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive cognitive decline and memory loss. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the prodromal stage of AD, with a conversion rate of 10%–15% per year and 50% conversion rate longitudinally. The pathological features of AD include the aberrant accumulation of amyloid-β plaques, neurofibrillary tangles formed by hyperphosphorylated tau and synaptic dysfunction (Nussbaumer et al., 2025), all of which have cascading effects on the brain activity of AD patients. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), specifically blood oxygenation level–dependent fMRI, is a non-invasive and radiation-free technique for indirectly measuring brain activity. It should be noted that fMRI has a double-edged sword nature. While fMRI is a powerful tool for detecting whole-brain-wide alterations in neural activity, its high sensitivity to brain states and complex analysis methods and indices also result in poor reproducibility across studies and compromise its further application in clinical practice. The results derived from extremely limited unpaired samples (e.g., before and after treatment in the same patients) or a longitudinal study design should be further explored.