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Abnormal dynamics of functional connectivity density in children with benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes

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Abstract

Converging evidence has shown the link between benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS) and abnormal functional connectivity among distant brain regions. However, prior research in BECTS has not examined the dynamic changes in functional connectivity as networks form. We combined functional connectivity density (FCD) mapping and sliding windows correlation analyses, to fully capture the functional dynamics in patients with respect to the presence of interictal epileptic discharges (IEDs). Resting-state fMRI was performed in 43 BECTS patients and 28 healthy controls (HC). Patients were further classified into two subgroups, namely, IED (n = 20) and non-IED (n = 23) depending on the simultaneous EEG–fMRI recordings. The global dynamic FCD (dFCD) was measured using sliding window correlation. Then we quantified dFCD variability using their standard deviation. Compared with HC, patients with and without IEDs both showed invariable dFCD (decreased) among the orbital fontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and striatum, as well as variable dFCD (increased) in the posterior default mode network (P < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). Correlation analysis indicated that the variable dFCD in precuneus was related to seizure onset age (P < 0.05, uncorrected). BECTS with IEDs showed variable dFCD in regions related to the typical seizure semiology. The abnormal patterns of fluctuating FCD in BECTS suggest that both active and chronic epileptic state may contribute to altered dynamics of functional connectivity associated with cognitive disturbances and developmental alterations. These findings highlight the importance of considering fluctuating dynamic neural communication among brain systems to deepen our understanding of epilepsy diseases.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the patients and volunteers for participating in this study, and thank Zhong-Jin Wang for initial patient identification and video/EEG review. This work was supported by the 863 project (2015AA020505), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61533006 and 81471653), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2013 M532229), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Zhejiang Province (2014C33189), and the “111” project (B12027).

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  1. The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, People’s Republic of China

    Rong Li, Liangcheng Wang, Heng Chen, Xiaonan Guo, Wei Liao & Huafu Chen

  2. Departments of Neurology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Medial College, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310009, People’s Republic of China

    Ye-Lei Tang

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  1. Rong Li
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  2. Liangcheng Wang
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Rong Li, Liangcheng Wang, Heng Chen, Xiaonan Guo, Wei Liao, Ye-Lei Tang, and Huafu Chen declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethnical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinksi Declaration of 1975, and the applicable revisions at the time of the investigation. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Li, R., Wang, L., Chen, H. et al. Abnormal dynamics of functional connectivity density in children with benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes. Brain Imaging and Behavior 13, 985–994 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-018-9914-0

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