Chen Xiaoyun, Chen Liting, Zheng Senning, Wang Hong, Dai Yanhong, Chen Zhuoming, Huang Ruiwang
Department of Rehabilitation, The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
Medical Imaging Center, First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2021 Oct 20;13:666301. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2021.666301. eCollection 2021.
Aphasia is characterized by the disability of spontaneous conversation, listening, understanding, retelling, naming, reading, or writing. However, the neural mechanisms of language damage after stroke are still under discussion. This study aimed to investigate the global and nodal characterization of the functional networks in patients with aphasic stroke based on resting-state functional MRI (fMRI). Twenty-four right-handed patients with aphasia after stroke and 19 healthy controls (HC) underwent a 3-TfMRI scan. A whole-brain large-scale functional connectivity network was then constructed based on Power's atlas of 264 functional regions of interest, and the global and nodal topological properties of these networks were analyzed using graph theory approaches. The results showed that patients with aphasia had decreased in small-worldness (sigma), normalized clustering coefficient (gamma), and local efficiency ( ) values. Furthermore, was positively correlated with language ability, retelling, naming, and listening comprehension in patients with aphasia. Patients with aphasia also had decreased nodal degree and decreased nodal efficiency in the left postcentral gyrus, central opercular cortex, and insular cortex. Our results suggest that the global and local topology attributes were altered by injury in patients with aphasic stroke. We argue that the local efficiency of brain networks might be used as a potential indicator of basic speech function in patients with aphasia.
失语症的特征是自发对话、听力、理解、复述、命名、阅读或写作能力受损。然而，中风后语言损伤的神经机制仍在探讨之中。本研究旨在基于静息态功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究失语性中风患者功能网络的全局和节点特征。24名右利手中风后失语患者和19名健康对照者（HC）接受了3-T fMRI扫描。然后基于包含264个感兴趣功能区的Power图谱构建全脑大规模功能连接网络，并使用图论方法分析这些网络的全局和节点拓扑特性。结果显示，失语症患者的小世界特性（σ）、标准化聚类系数（γ）和局部效率（ ）值降低。此外， 在失语症患者中与语言能力、复述、命名和听力理解呈正相关。失语症患者在左侧中央后回、中央 opercular 皮质和岛叶皮质的节点度和节点效率也降低。我们的结果表明，失语性中风患者的损伤改变了全局和局部拓扑属性。我们认为，脑网络的局部效率可能作为失语症患者基本言语功能的潜在指标。
