Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University School of Medicine, Nanjing 210002, China; Department of Medical Imaging, Jiangsu Province Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Nanjing 210029, China; Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, 1145 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, ON K1Z 7K4, Canada.
Neurosci Lett. 2013 Oct 25;555:187-92. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2013.09.054. Epub 2013 Sep 30.
Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) presents typical symptoms of cognitive impairments and mental disorders, which is presumed to be related to impairment of self-referential processing. This study aims to investigate the alterations of self-reference in mTLE using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Fifty patients with unilateral mTLE (26 left- and 24 right-sided mTLE) were recruited in the present study. Traditional task paradigm of internally-cued condition vs. externally-cued condition was employed to induce self-referential activation. FMRI activation in each group of patients was compared with that of 30 healthy controls. Moreover, fMRI responses in the dorsal mesial prefrontal cortex were specifically addressed by correlating with behavioral data of reaction times and clinical data of epilepsy duration, respectively. Compared with the healthy controls, both two groups of patients showed decreased behavioral performance (reaction times) and decreased fMRI activation of self-reference in the anterior and posterior cortical midline structures. Moreover, fMRI activation was found to be negatively correlated with behavioral performance and epilepsy duration. The present findings implicate functional impairment of self-reference caused by epilepsy in mTLE. This study provided imaging evidence for functional impairments of self-referential processing and brain default-mode function in mTLE.
内侧颞叶癫痫（mTLE）表现出典型的认知障碍和精神障碍症状，据推测这与自我参照加工的损害有关。本研究旨在使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究 mTLE 中的自我参照改变。本研究共招募了 50 名单侧 mTLE 患者（26 名左侧和 24 名右侧）。采用传统的内线索条件与外线索条件的任务范式来诱导自我参照激活。比较了每组患者的 fMRI 激活与 30 名健康对照者的 fMRI 激活。此外，通过分别与反应时间的行为数据和癫痫持续时间的临床数据相关联，特别关注背内侧前额叶皮层的 fMRI 反应。与健康对照组相比，两组患者在前、后皮质中线结构中的自我参照的行为表现（反应时间）和 fMRI 激活均降低。此外，fMRI 激活与行为表现和癫痫持续时间呈负相关。本研究结果提示癫痫导致 mTLE 患者的自我参照功能障碍。该研究为 mTLE 中自我参照加工和大脑默认模式功能的功能障碍提供了影像学证据。
