Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Jinling Hospital, the First School of Clinical Medicine, Southern Medical University, Nanjing, 210002, China.
Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University School of Medicine, Nanjing, 210002, China.
Commun Biol. 2023 Jul 10;6(1):704. doi: 10.1038/s42003-023-05075-8.
Functional connectivity hierarchy is an important principle in the process of brain functional organization and an important feature reflecting brain development. However, atypical brain network hierarchy organization in Rolandic epilepsy have not been systematically investigated. We examined connectivity alteration with age and its relation to epileptic incidence, cognition, or underlying genetic factors in 162 cases of Rolandic epilepsy and 117 typically developing children, by measuring fMRI multi-axis functional connectivity gradients. Rolandic epilepsy is characterized by contracting and slowing expansion of the functional connectivity gradients, highlighting the atypical age-related change of the connectivity hierarchy in segregation properties. The gradient alterations are relevant to seizure incidence, cognition, and connectivity deficit, and development-associated genetic basis. Collectively, our approach provides converging evidence for atypical connectivity hierarchy as a system-level substrate of Rolandic epilepsy, suggesting this is a disorder of information processing across multiple functional domains, and established a framework for large-scale brain hierarchical research.
功能连接层次结构是大脑功能组织过程中的一个重要原则，也是反映大脑发育的一个重要特征。然而，罗兰氏癫痫的非典型脑网络层次结构组织尚未得到系统研究。我们通过测量 fMRI 多轴功能连接梯度，在 162 例罗兰氏癫痫患者和 117 名正常发育儿童中，检查了与年龄相关的连接变化及其与癫痫发作、认知或潜在遗传因素的关系。罗兰氏癫痫的特点是功能连接梯度的收缩和扩张速度减慢，突出了连接层次在分离特性方面的非典型年龄相关变化。梯度变化与癫痫发作、认知和连接缺陷以及与发育相关的遗传基础有关。总之，我们的方法为连接层次的非典型性提供了系统水平的罗兰氏癫痫的证据，表明这是一种跨多个功能域的信息处理障碍，并为大规模脑层次结构研究建立了框架。
