Reduced brain connectivity and mental flexibility in mild traumatic brain injury

Pang, Elizabeth W.; Dunkley, Benjamin T.; Doesburg, Sam M.; Costa, Leodante da; Taylor, Margot J.

doi:10.1002/acn3.280

Cited by 31 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Phase synchronization of neural oscillations is widely acknowledged as a fundamental mechanism that coordinates distributed processing of neuronal groups ( 16 , 46 – 48 ). Several studies have reported diminished phase synchronization in mTBI patients ( 22 – 24 ), suggesting inefficient communication between brain regions due to head injury. Particularly, one study ( 23 ) in soldiers after blast-related mTBI identified diminished frontal phase synchrony in various frequency bands and found that phase synchrony in high frequency (beta and gamma) bands were associated with the integrity of white matter tracts of the frontal lobe.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disrupted Gamma Synchrony after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Its Correlation with White Matter Abnormality

et al. 2017

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Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) has been firmly associated with disrupted white matter integrity due to induced white matter damage and degeneration. However, comparatively less is known about the changes of the intrinsic functional connectivity mediated via neural synchronization in the brain after mTBI. Moreover, despite the presumed link between structural and functional connectivity, no existing studies in mTBI have demonstrated clear association between the structural abnormality of white matter axons and the disruption of neural synchronization. To investigate these questions, we recorded resting state EEG and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) from a cohort of military service members. A newly developed synchronization measure, the weighted phase lag index was applied on the EEG data for estimating neural synchronization. Fractional anisotropy was computed from the DTI data for estimating white matter integrity. Fifteen service members with a history of mTBI within the past 3 years were compared to 22 demographically similar controls who reported no history of head injury. We observed that synchronization at low-gamma frequency band (25–40 Hz) across scalp regions was significantly decreased in mTBI cases compared with controls. The synchronization in theta (4–7 Hz), alpha (8–13 Hz), and beta (15–23 Hz) frequency bands were not significantly different between the two groups. In addition, we found that across mTBI cases, the disrupted synchronization at low-gamma frequency was significantly correlated with the white matter integrity of the inferior cerebellar peduncle, which was also significantly reduced in the mTBI group. These findings demonstrate an initial correlation between the impairment of white matter integrity and alterations in EEG synchronization in the brain after mTBI. The results also suggest that disruption of intrinsic neural synchronization at low-gamma frequency may be a characteristic functional pathology following mTBI and may prove useful for developing better methods of diagnosis and treatment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disrupted Gamma Synchrony after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Its Correlation with White Matter Abnormality

et al. 2017

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“…The main characteristics of those symptoms are often physical, emotional, cognitive, and sleep disturbances that may need several months to improve (Huang et al, 2014). In many neuropsychological studies (Huang et al, 2014;Pang et al, 2016), reduced cognitive efficiency in several brain functions has been reported, especially in tests measuring processing speed, executive function, attention, memory, and connectivity, in mTBI patients with persistent symptoms. Handling of mTBI patients is not a trivial task as oftentimes mTBI affects severely brain functionality (Vanderploeg et al, 2005;De Monte et al, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aberrant Whole-Brain Transitions and Dynamics of Spontaneous Network Microstates in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Antonakakis

Dimitriadis

Zervakis

et al. 2020

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

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“…These symptoms are often characterized by physical, emotional, cognitive, and sleep disturbances and may take many months to return to the baseline (Huang et al, 2014 ). Several neuropsychological studies have reported reduced cognitive efficiency, especially in tests measuring executive function, processing speed, attention, connectivity, and memory in mTBI patients with persistent symptoms (Huang et al, 2014 ; Pang et al, 2016 ). Management of mTBI is crucial due to its deleterious effects on certain brain functions, including attention (De Monte et al, 2006 ), working memory (Vanderploeg et al, 2005 ), and verbal learning (De Monte et al, 2006 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered Rich-Club and Frequency-Dependent Subnetwork Organization in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A MEG Resting-State Study

Antonakakis

Dimitriadis

Zervakis

et al. 2017

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Functional brain connectivity networks exhibit “small-world” characteristics and some of these networks follow a “rich-club” organization, whereby a few nodes of high connectivity (hubs) tend to connect more densely among themselves than to nodes of lower connectivity. The Current study followed an “attack strategy” to compare the rich-club and small-world network organization models using Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings from mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) patients and neurologically healthy controls to identify the topology that describes the underlying intrinsic brain network organization. We hypothesized that the reduction in global efficiency caused by an attack targeting a model's hubs would reveal the “true” underlying topological organization. Connectivity networks were estimated using mutual information as the basis for cross-frequency coupling. Our results revealed a prominent rich-club network organization for both groups. In particular, mTBI patients demonstrated hyper-synchronization among rich-club hubs compared to controls in the δ band and the δ-γ1, θ-γ1, and β-γ2 frequency pairs. Moreover, rich-club hubs in mTBI patients were overrepresented in right frontal brain areas, from θ to γ1 frequencies, and underrepresented in left occipital regions in the δ-β, δ-γ1, θ-β, and β-γ2 frequency pairs. These findings indicate that the rich-club organization of resting-state MEG, considering its role in information integration and its vulnerability to various disorders like mTBI, may have a significant predictive value in the development of reliable biomarkers to help the validation of the recovery from mTBI. Furthermore, the proposed approach might be used as a validation tool to assess patient recovery.

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Reduced brain connectivity and mental flexibility in mild traumatic brain injury

Cited by 31 publications

References 57 publications

Disrupted Gamma Synchrony after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Its Correlation with White Matter Abnormality

Disrupted Gamma Synchrony after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Its Correlation with White Matter Abnormality

Aberrant Whole-Brain Transitions and Dynamics of Spontaneous Network Microstates in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Altered Rich-Club and Frequency-Dependent Subnetwork Organization in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A MEG Resting-State Study

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