Purpose. We investigated the disparate influence of lesion location on functional damage and reorganization of the sensorimotor brain network in patients with thalamic infarction and pontine infarction. Methods. Fourteen patients with unilateral infarction of the thalamus and 14 patients with unilateral infarction of the pons underwent longitudinal fMRI measurements and motor functional assessment five times during a 6-month period (<7 days, at 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after stroke onset). Twenty-five age- and sex-matched controls underwent MRI examination across five consecutive time points in 6 months. Functional images from patients with left hemisphere lesions were first flipped from the left to the right side. The voxel-wise connectivity analyses between the reference time course of each ROI (the contralateral dorsal lateral putamen (dl-putamen), pons, ventral anterior (VA), and ventral lateral (VL) nuclei of the thalamus) and the time course of each voxel in the sensorimotor area were performed for all five measurements. One-way ANOVA was used to identify between-group differences in functional connectivity (FC) at baseline stage (<7 days after stroke onset), with infarction volume included as a nuisance variable. The family-wise error (FWE) method was used to account for multiple comparison issues using SPM software. Post hoc repeated-measure ANOVA was applied to examine longitudinal FC reorganization. Results. At baseline stage, significant differences were detected between the contralateral VA and ipsilateral postcentral gyrus (cl_VA-ip_postcentral), contralateral VL and ipsilateral precentral gyrus (cl_VL-ip_precentral). Repeated measures ANOVA revealed that the FC change of cl_VA-ip_postcentral differ significantly among the three groups over time. The significant changes of FC between cl_VA and ip_postcentral at different time points in the thalamic infarction group showed that compared with 7 days after stroke onset, there was significantly increased FC of cl_VA-ip_postcentral at 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months after stroke onset. Conclusions. The different patterns of sensorimotor functional damage and reorganization in patients with pontine infarction and thalamic infarction may provide insights into the neural mechanisms underlying functional recovery after stroke.

中文翻译：

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感觉运动静息状态功能连接的纵向变化区分丘脑梗死和脑桥梗死患者

目的e。我们调查了病变位置对丘脑梗死和脑桥梗死患者功能损伤和感觉运动脑网络重组的不同影响。方法. 14 名单侧丘脑梗死患者和 14 名单侧脑桥梗死患者在 6 个月期间（<7 天、2 周、1 个月、3 个月和 6中风发作后数月）。25 名年龄和性别匹配的对照在 6 个月内连续五个时间点接受了 MRI 检查。首先将左半球病变患者的功能图像从左侧翻转到右侧。每个 ROI 的参考时间过程（丘脑的对侧背侧壳核 (dl-putamen)、脑桥、腹前 (VA) 和腹侧 (VL) 核）与对所有五次测量执行感觉运动区域中的每个体素。单因素方差分析用于确定基线阶段（卒中发病后 < 7 天）功能连接性 (FC) 的组间差异，其中梗塞体积作为不利变量。全族误差 (FWE) 方法用于使用 SPM 软件解决多重比较问题。应用事后重复测量方差分析来检查纵向 FC 重组。结果。在基线阶段，在对侧 VA 和同侧中央后回 (cl_VA-ip_postcentral)、对侧 VL 和同侧中央前回 (cl_VL-ip_precentral) 之间检测到显着差异。重复测量方差分析显示，随着时间的推移，三组之间 cl_VA-ip_postcentral 的 FC 变化显着不同。丘脑梗死组不同时间点 cl_VA 和 ip_postcentral FC 的显着变化表明，与卒中发病后 7 d 相比，卒中发病后 1 个月、3 个月和 6 个月 cl_VA-ip_postcentral 的 FC 显着升高。 . 结论. 脑桥梗死和丘脑梗死患者感觉运动功能损伤和重组的不同模式可能有助于深入了解卒中后功能恢复的神经机制。