Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing Clinical School, Southern Medical University, Nanjing, 210002, China.
Institute of Neurology, Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hefei, China.
Brain Imaging Behav. 2022 Feb;16(1):424-434. doi: 10.1007/s11682-021-00517-5. Epub 2021 Aug 22.
To investigate the influence of epileptogenic cortex (Rolandic areas) with executive functions in Rolandic epilepsy using structural covariance analysis of structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Structural MRI data of drug-naive patients with Rolandic epilepsy (n = 70) and typically developing children as healthy controls (n = 83) were analyzed using voxel-based morphometry. Gray matter volumes in the patients were compared with those of healthy controls, and were further correlated with epilepsy duration and cognitive score of executive function, respectively. By applying Granger causal analysis to the sequenced morphometric data according to disease progression information, causal network of structural covariance was constructed to assess the causal influence of structural changes from Rolandic cortices to the regions engaging executive function in the patients. Compared with healthy controls, epilepsy patients showed increased gray matter volume in the Rolandic regions, and also the regions engaging in executive function. Covariance network analyses showed that along with disease progression, the Rolandic regions imposed positive causal influence on the regions engaging in executive function. In the patients with Rolandic epilepsy, epileptogenic regions have causal influence on the structural changes in the regions of executive function, implicating damaging effects of Rolandic epilepsy on human brain.
运用结构磁共振成像（MRI）的结构协方差分析，研究致痫皮层（罗兰氏区）对罗兰氏癫痫执行功能的影响。对 70 例未经药物治疗的罗兰氏癫痫患者和 83 名正常发育儿童作为健康对照的结构 MRI 数据进行了基于体素的形态计量学分析。将患者的灰质体积与健康对照组进行了比较，并进一步分别与癫痫持续时间和执行功能认知评分进行了相关性分析。根据疾病进展信息，对序列形态计量学数据应用格兰杰因果分析，构建结构协方差的因果网络，以评估从罗兰氏皮层到执行功能相关区域的结构变化对患者的因果影响。与健康对照组相比，癫痫患者在罗兰氏区域和参与执行功能的区域显示出灰质体积增加。协方差网络分析表明，随着疾病的进展，罗兰氏区域对参与执行功能的区域产生了正向的因果影响。在罗兰氏癫痫患者中，致痫区对执行功能区的结构变化有因果影响，这表明罗兰氏癫痫对人脑有损害作用。
