Relationship between temporal dynamics of intrinsic brain activity and motor function remodeling in patients with acute BGIS

Abstract

Backgroundpatients with acute basal ganglia ischemic stroke (BGIS) show changes in local brain activity represented by the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), but the time-varying characteristics of this local nerve activity are still unclear. This study aimed to investigate the abnormal time-varying local brain activity of patients with acute BGIS by using the ALFF method combined with the sliding-window approach.MethodsIn this study, 34 patients with acute BGIS with motor dysfunction and 44 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. The dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (dALFF) was employed to detect the alterations in brain activity induced by acute BGIS patients. A two-sample t-test comparison was performed to compare the dALFF value between the two groups and a Spearman correlation analysis was conducted to assess the relationship between the local brain activity abnormalities and clinical characteristics.ResultsCompared with HCs, the activity of neurons in the left temporal pole (TP), parahippocampal gyrus (paraHIP), middle occipital gyrus (MOG), dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus (SFGdl), medial cingulate cortex (MCC), right rectus, precuneus (PCu) and right cerebellum crus1 were significantly increased in patients with BGIS. In addition, we found that there was a negative correlation (r = −0.458, p = 0.007) between the dALFF value of the right rectus and the scores of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), and a positive correlation (r = 0.488, 0.499, p < 0.05) with the scores of the Barthel Index scale (BI) and the Fugl Meyer motor function assessment (FMA). ROC analysis results demonstrated that the area under the curves (AUC) of the right rectus was 0.880, p<0.001.ConclusionThe pattern of intrinsic brain activity variability was altered in patients with acute BGIS compared with HCs. The abnormal dALFF variability might be a potential tool to assess motor function in patients with acute BGIS and potentially inform the diagnosis of this disease.

Alterations of dynamic and static brain functional activities and integration in stroke patients

“…The sliding window method is effective and sensitive in exploring temporal variability of brain activity and functional connectivity over the whole brain ( Liu et al, 2017 ; Ma et al, 2021 ; Dong et al, 2022 ). Several studies have adopted the sliding window approach to observe functional connectivity or brain activity dynamics in patients with stroke and have found significant changes in dynamic functional connectivity of brain networks ( Chen et al, 2018 ; Bonkhoff et al, 2020 , 2021 ; Bruyn et al, 2023 ) or dynamic ALFF (dALFF) or dynamic regional homogeneity of brain regions ( Chen et al, 2019 ; Tian et al, 2022 ; Xie et al, 2022 ; Chen and Li, 2023 ). The study of Xie et al also showed both altered dALFF and static ALFF (sALFF) were associated with the clinical characteristics of patients with stroke ( Xie et al, 2022 ), suggesting that dynamic and static analysis play an important role in understanding the neuropathology of dysfunction in stroke patients.…”