Citation

Palacios EM, Yuh EL, Chang YS, Yue JK, Schnyer DM, Okonkwo DO, Valadka AB, Gordon WA, Maas AI, Vassar M, Manley GT, Mukherjee P. J. Neurotrauma 2017; 34(8): 1546-1557.

Affiliation

Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Center, San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center , San Francisco, California.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/neu.2016.4752

PMID

28085565

Abstract

Brain lesions are subtle or absent in most patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and the standard clinical criteria are not reliable for predicting long-term outcome. This study investigates resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI) to assess semiacute alterations in brain connectivity and its relationship with outcome measures assessed 6 months after injury. Seventy-five mTBI patients were recruited as part of the prospective multicenter Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI (TRACK-TBI) pilot study and compared with matched 47 healthy subjects. Patients were classified following radiological criteria: CT/MRI positive, evidence of lesions; CT/MRI negative, without evidence of brain lesions. rsfMRI data were acquired and then processed using probabilistic independent component analysis. We compared the functional connectivity of the resting-state networks (RSNs) between patients and controls, as well as group differences in the interactions between RSNs, and related both to cognitive and behavioral performance at 6 months post-injury. Alterations were found in the spatial maps of the RSNs between mTBI patients and healthy controls in networks involved in behavioral and cognition processes. These alterations were predictive of mTBI patients' outcomes at 6 months post-injury. Moreover, different patterns of reduced network interactions were found between the CT/MRI positive and CT/MRI negative patients and the control group. These rsfMRI results demonstrate that even mTBI patients not showing brain lesions on conventional CT/MRI scans can have alterations of functional connectivity at the semiacute stage that help explain their outcomes. These results suggest rsfMRI as a sensitive biomarker both for early diagnosis and for prediction of the cognitive and behavioral performance of these patients.

Language: en

Keywords

TBI; cognitive and behavioral outcome; rsfMRI