Jiang Wenyu, Li Jianping, Chen Xuemei, Ye Wei, Zheng Jinou
Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China.
Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, China.
Front Neurol. 2017 May 3;8:179. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2017.00179. eCollection 2017.
Previous studies have shown that temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) involves abnormal structural or functional connectivity in specific brain areas. However, limited comprehensive studies have been conducted on TLE associated changes in the topological organization of structural and functional networks. Additionally, epilepsy is associated with impairment in alertness, a fundamental component of attention. In this study, structural networks were constructed using diffusion tensor imaging tractography, and functional networks were obtained from resting-state functional MRI temporal series correlations in 20 right temporal lobe epilepsy (rTLE) patients and 19 healthy controls. Global network properties were computed by graph theoretical analysis, and correlations were assessed between global network properties and alertness. The results from these analyses showed that rTLE patients exhibit abnormal small-world attributes in structural and functional networks. Structural networks shifted toward more regular attributes, but functional networks trended toward more random attributes. After controlling for the influence of the disease duration, negative correlations were found between alertness, small-worldness, and the cluster coefficient. However, alertness did not correlate with either the characteristic path length or global efficiency in rTLE patients. Our findings show that disruptions of the topological construction of brain structural and functional networks as well as small-world property bias are associated with deficits in alertness in rTLE patients. These data suggest that reorganization of brain networks develops as a mechanism to compensate for altered structural and functional brain function during disease progression.
以往研究表明，颞叶癫痫（TLE）涉及特定脑区的结构或功能连接异常。然而，针对TLE相关的结构和功能网络拓扑组织变化的综合研究有限。此外，癫痫与警觉性受损有关，警觉性是注意力的一个基本组成部分。在本研究中，使用扩散张量成像纤维束成像构建结构网络，并从20例右侧颞叶癫痫（rTLE）患者和19名健康对照的静息态功能磁共振成像时间序列相关性中获得功能网络。通过图论分析计算全局网络属性，并评估全局网络属性与警觉性之间的相关性。这些分析结果表明，rTLE患者在结构和功能网络中表现出异常的小世界属性。结构网络向更规则的属性转变，但功能网络趋向于更随机的属性。在控制疾病持续时间的影响后，发现警觉性、小世界属性和聚类系数之间存在负相关。然而，在rTLE患者中，警觉性与特征路径长度或全局效率均无相关性。我们的研究结果表明，脑结构和功能网络的拓扑结构破坏以及小世界属性偏差与rTLE患者的警觉性缺陷有关。这些数据表明，脑网络重组是疾病进展过程中补偿脑结构和功能改变的一种机制。
