Altered Cortical-Striatal Network in Patients With Hemifacial Spasm

Abstract

Objective: Hemifacial spasm (HFS) is a kind of motor disorder, and the striatum plays a significant role in motor function. The purpose of this study was to explore the alterations of the cortical-striatal network in HFS using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).Methods: The fMRI data of 30 adult patients with primary unilateral HFS (15 left-side and 15 right-side) and 30 healthy controls were collected. Six subregions of the striatum in each hemisphere were selected for functional connectivity (FC) analysis. One-sample t-test was used to analyze the intragroup FC of the HFS group and the control group. Two-sample t-test was used to compare the difference of FC between the two groups. The correlation between the abnormal FC and severity of HFS was evaluated by using the Spearman correlation analysis.Results: Compared with the controls, the striatal subregions had altered FC with motor and orbitofrontal cortex in patients with HFS. The altered FC between striatal subregions and motor cortex was correlated with the spasm severity in patients with HFS.Conclusion: The FC of the cortical-striatal network was altered in primary HFS, and these alterations were correlated with the severity of HFS. This study indicated that the cortical-striatal network may play different roles in the underlying pathological mechanism of HFS.

Disruption of the white matter structural network in patients with hemifacial spasm and changes after microvascular decompression

“…Categorical variables were analyzed using the chi-square test. Pearson correlation analysis was used to evaluate the correlation between changes in topological properties and clinical scale scores (Gao et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2022). The False Discovery Rate (FDR) method was used to correct P-values.…”

“…To unify the affected side of the patients, the T1WI and DTI data with right HFS (11 cases) were ipped from right to left prior to preprocessing (Song et al, 2017;Gao et al, 2021). All DTI data were analyzed using the PANDA toolbox (Pipeline for Analyzing Brain Diffusion Images toolkit, https://www.nitrc.org/projects/panda/) (Cui et al, 2013;Lin et al, 2022).…”

Brain White Matter Structural Alteration in Hemifacial Spasm: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

“…Prior rs-fMRI studies associated with HFS provided evidence that there was not only hyperexcitability in the facial nucleus and the brain areas involved in facial movement, but also abnormality in the areas related to inhibitory motor control. The abnormal functional connectivity (FC) between the thalamus, striatum, and motor cortex was also found in patients with HFS 11,15–17. In addition, another study suggested abnormal FC between the amygdala and the brain areas related to visual stimuli coordination and emotion generation or regulation 7.…”

“…The abnormal functional connectivity (FC) between the thalamus, striatum, and motor cortex was also found in patients with HFS. 11,[15][16][17] In addition, another study suggested abnormal FC between the amygdala and the brain areas related to visual stimuli coordination and emotion generation or regulation. 7 In short, the alterations of gray matter structure and spontaneous activities in HFS patients are mainly concentrated in several areas, which are mostly involved in facial movement and motor control, emotion regulation, and visual processing.…”