Disrupted structural and functional connectivity networks in ischemic stroke patients

Publication date: 19 November 2017 Source:Neuroscience, Volume 364 Author(s): Jingna Zhang, Ye Zhang, Li Wang, Linqiong Sang, Jun Yang, Rubing Yan, Pengyue Li, Jian Wang, Mingguo Qiu Local lesions caused by stroke may result in extensive structural and functional reorganization in the brain. Previous studies of this phenomenon have focused on specific brain networks. Here, we aimed to discover abnormalities in whole-brain networks and to explore the decoupling between structural and functional connectivity in patients with stroke. Fifteen ischemic stroke patients and 23 normal controls (NCs) were recruited in this study. A graph theoretical analysis was employed to investigate the abnormal topological properties of structural and functional brain networks in patients with stroke. Both patients with stroke and NCs exhibited small-world organization in brain networks. However, compared to NCs, patients with stroke exhibited abnormal global properties characterized by a higher characteristic path length and lower global efficiency. Furthermore, patients with stroke showed altered nodal characteristics, primarily in certain motor- and cognition-related regions. Positive correlations between the nodal degree of the inferior parietal lobule and the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) score and between the nodal betweenness centrality of the posterior cingulate gyrus (PCG) and immediate recall were observed in patients with stroke. Most importantly, the strength of the structural...
Source: Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research