Li Fengfang, Liu Yin, Lu Liyan, Shang Song'an, Chen Huiyou, Haidari Nasir Ahmad, Wang Peng, Yin Xindao, Chen Yu-Chen
Department of Radiology, Nanjing First Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China.
Quant Imaging Med Surg. 2022 Jul;12(7):3932-3946. doi: 10.21037/qims-21-915.
Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is typically characterized by temporally limited cognitive impairment and regarded as a brain connectome disorder. Recent findings have suggested that a higher level of organization named the "rich-club" may play a central role in enabling the integration of information and efficient communication across different systems of the brain. However, the alterations in rich-club organization and hub topology in mTBI and its relationship with cognitive impairment after mTBI have been scarcely elucidated.
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data were collected from 88 patients with mTBI and 85 matched healthy controls (HCs). Large-scale functional brain networks were established for each participant. Rich-club organizations and network properties were assessed and analyzed between groups. Finally, we analyzed the correlations between the cognitive performance and changes in rich-club organization and network properties.
Both mTBI and HCs groups showed significant rich-club organization. Meanwhile, the rich-club organization was aberrant, with enhanced functional connectivity (FC) among rich-club nodes and peripheral regions in acute mTBI. In addition, significant differences in partial global and local network topological property measures were found between mTBI patients and HCs (P<0.01). In patients with mTBI, changes in rich-club organization and network properties were found to be related to early cognitive impairment after mTBI (P<0.05).
Our findings suggest that such patterns of disruption and reorganization will provide the basic functional architecture for cognitive function, which may subsequently be used as an earlier biomarker for cognitive impairment after mTBI.
轻度创伤性脑损伤（mTBI）通常表现为具有时间局限性的认知障碍，并被视为一种脑连接组疾病。最近的研究结果表明，一种名为“富俱乐部”的更高层次的组织可能在促进大脑不同系统间的信息整合和高效通信中发挥核心作用。然而，mTBI中富俱乐部组织和枢纽拓扑结构的改变及其与mTBI后认知障碍的关系几乎尚未阐明。
收集了88例mTBI患者和85名匹配的健康对照（HCs）的静息态功能磁共振成像（rs-fMRI）数据。为每位参与者建立了大规模功能性脑网络。评估并分析了两组之间的富俱乐部组织和网络属性。最后，我们分析了认知表现与富俱乐部组织和网络属性变化之间的相关性。
mTBI组和HCs组均显示出显著的富俱乐部组织。同时，富俱乐部组织存在异常，在急性mTBI中富俱乐部节点与周边区域之间的功能连接（FC）增强。此外，mTBI患者与HCs之间在部分全局和局部网络拓扑属性测量方面存在显著差异（P<0.01）。在mTBI患者中，发现富俱乐部组织和网络属性的变化与mTBI后的早期认知障碍有关（P<0.05）。
我们的研究结果表明，这种破坏和重组模式将为认知功能提供基本的功能架构，随后可作为mTBI后认知障碍的早期生物标志物。
