Abstract
White matter disruption plays an important role in disorders of consciousness (DOC). The aim of this study was to analyze the connectometry between DOC patients and healthy controls and to explore the relationship between diffusion connectometry and levels of consciousness. Fourteen patients with DOC and 13 sex- and age-matched controls were included in this study. The participants underwent diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and T1-weighted structural MRI at 7 Tesla. Diffusion MRI connectometry was performed to investigate the differences between groups, and to subsequently study the correlation between Coma Recovery Scale-Revised (CRS-R) indexes and white matter integrity. In DOC patients, the quantitative anisotropy (QA) was significantly reduced in deep white matter tracts, whereas significantly higher QA values were found in the bilateral cerebellum compared with healthy controls. Moreover, the QA values in many tracts within the right hemisphere were higher in patients in a minimally conscious state compared to those in vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, which was reflected by the correlation between diffusion connectometry and CRS-R indexes. These results indicate that the cerebellum may play an important role in DOC, and the lateralization of the cerebral hemisphere in affected patients may suggest neural compensation.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy and ethical restrictions.
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This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFA0701400), National Natural Science Foundation of China (81870817, 81701774, and 61771423), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (226-2022-00136), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LGF22H090004), Zhejiang Lab (2018EB0ZX01), Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (2018B030333001), Guangzhou Key R&D Program of China (202007030005), Scientific Research Foundation of Zhejiang University City College (J-202224), and MOE Frontier Center for Brain Science and Brain-machine Integration at Zhejiang University.
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XT, XZ, and BL were responsible for the study design, literature search, and manuscript drafting. XT, ZZ, YY, and JG were responsible for data collection and statistical analysis. XT, RW, YY, and ZZ were mainly responsible for administrative, technical, or material support. XZ and BL were responsible for the study concept and critical revision. All the authors contributed to editing of the manuscript.
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Tan, X., Zhou, Z., Gao, J. et al. White matter connectometry in patients with disorders of consciousness revealed by 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging. Brain Imaging and Behavior 16, 1983–1991 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-022-00668-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-022-00668-z