Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, People's Republic of China.
PLoS One. 2010 Jan 8;5(1):e8525. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008525.
The functional architecture of the human brain has been extensively described in terms of functional connectivity networks, detected from the low-frequency coherent neuronal fluctuations that can be observed in a resting state condition. Little is known, so far, about the changes in functional connectivity and in the topological properties of functional networks, associated with different brain diseases.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In this study, we investigated alterations related to mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging on 18 mTLE patients and 27 healthy controls. Functional connectivity among 90 cortical and subcortical regions was measured by temporal correlation. The related values were analyzed to construct a set of undirected graphs. Compared to controls, mTLE patients showed significantly increased connectivity within the medial temporal lobes, but also significantly decreased connectivity within the frontal and parietal lobes, and between frontal and parietal lobes. Our findings demonstrated that a large number of areas in the default-mode network of mTLE patients showed a significantly decreased number of connections to other regions. Furthermore, we observed altered small-world properties in patients, along with smaller degree of connectivity, increased n-to-1 connectivity, smaller absolute clustering coefficients and shorter absolute path length.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We suggest that the mTLE alterations observed in functional connectivity and topological properties may be used to define tentative disease markers.
人类大脑的功能结构已在很大程度上根据功能连接网络来描述，这些网络是从静息状态下可观察到的低频相干神经元波动中检测到的。到目前为止，人们对与不同脑部疾病相关的功能连接和功能网络拓扑性质的变化知之甚少。
方法/主要发现：在这项研究中，我们使用 18 名颞叶内侧癫痫（mTLE）患者和 27 名健康对照者的静息状态功能磁共振成像，研究了与 mTLE 相关的改变。通过时间相关测量了 90 个皮质和皮质下区域之间的功能连接。对相关值进行了分析，以构建一组无向图。与对照组相比，mTLE 患者在内侧颞叶内的连接显著增加，但在前额和顶叶内以及前额和顶叶之间的连接显著减少。我们的研究结果表明，mTLE 患者的默认模式网络中的大量区域与其他区域的连接数量显著减少。此外，我们观察到患者的小世界属性发生改变，表现为连接度降低、n 到 1 的连接增加、绝对聚类系数减小以及绝对路径长度缩短。
结论/意义：我们认为，在功能连接和拓扑性质中观察到的 mTLE 改变可用于定义暂定的疾病标志物。
