Investigating Brain Network Changes and Their Association With Cognitive Recovery After Traumatic Brain Injury: A Longitudinal Analysis

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can result in acute cognitive deficits and diffuse axonal injury reflected in white matter brain network alterations, which may, or may not, later recover. Our objective is to first characterize the ways in which brain networks change after TBI and, second, investigate i...

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Published inFrontiers in neurology Vol. 11; p. 369
Main Authors Moreira da Silva, Nádia, Cowie, Christopher J A, Blamire, Andrew M, Forsyth, Rob, Taylor, Peter Neal
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 09.06.2020
Subjects
graph theoretical analysis
longitudinal
network
Neurology
structural connectivity
TBI
structural connectivity
TBI
longitudinal
graph theoretical analysis
network
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Summary:Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can result in acute cognitive deficits and diffuse axonal injury reflected in white matter brain network alterations, which may, or may not, later recover. Our objective is to first characterize the ways in which brain networks change after TBI and, second, investigate if those changes are associated with recovery of cognitive deficits. We aim to make initial progress in discerning the relationships between brain network changes, and their (dys)functional correlates. We analyze longitudinally acquired MRI from 23 TBI patients (two time points: 6 days, 12 months post-injury) and cross-sectional data from 28 controls to construct white matter brain networks. Cognitive assessment was also performed. Graph theory and regression analysis were applied to identify changed brain network metrics after injury that are associated with subsequent improvements in cognitive function. Sixteen brain network metrics were found to be discriminative of different post-injury phases. Eleven of those explain 90% (adjusted ) of the variability observed in cognitive recovery following TBI. Brain network metrics that had a high contribution to the explained variance were found in frontal and temporal cortex, additional to the anterior cingulate cortex. Our preliminary study suggests that network reorganization may be related to recovery of impaired cognitive function in the first year after a TBI.
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Edited by: Christian Gaser, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
Reviewed by: Yongxia Zhou, University of Southern California, United States; Yunliang Cai, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, United States; Catherine D. Chong, Mayo Clinic Arizona, United States
This article was submitted to Applied Neuroimaging, a section of the journal Frontiers in Neurology
ISSN:1664-2295
1664-2295
DOI:10.3389/fneur.2020.00369