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Influence of epileptogenic region on brain structural changes in Rolandic epilepsy

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Abstract

To investigate the influence of epileptogenic cortex (Rolandic areas) with executive functions in Rolandic epilepsy using structural covariance analysis of structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Structural MRI data of drug-naive patients with Rolandic epilepsy (n = 70) and typically developing children as healthy controls (n = 83) were analyzed using voxel-based morphometry. Gray matter volumes in the patients were compared with those of healthy controls, and were further correlated with epilepsy duration and cognitive score of executive function, respectively. By applying Granger causal analysis to the sequenced morphometric data according to disease progression information, causal network of structural covariance was constructed to assess the causal influence of structural changes from Rolandic cortices to the regions engaging executive function in the patients. Compared with healthy controls, epilepsy patients showed increased gray matter volume in the Rolandic regions, and also the regions engaging in executive function. Covariance network analyses showed that along with disease progression, the Rolandic regions imposed positive causal influence on the regions engaging in executive function. In the patients with Rolandic epilepsy, epileptogenic regions have causal influence on the structural changes in the regions of executive function, implicating damaging effects of Rolandic epilepsy on human brain.

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Abbreviations

RE:

Rolandic epilepsy

MRI:

Magnetic resonance imaging

VBM:

Voxel-based morphometry

GMV:

Gray matter volume

SCN:

Structural covariance network

CaSCN:

Causal network of structural covariance

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Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81871345, 81701680, 81790653, 81422022, 81271553, 81401402, 81471653, 81201078 and 81701678), 863 Project (Grant Nos. 2014BAI04B05 and 2015AA020505).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing Clinical School, Southern Medical University, Nanjing, 210002, China

    Yin Xu, Qirui Zhang, Guangming Lu & Zhiqiang Zhang

  2. Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University School of Medicine, Nanjing, 210002, China

    Qiang Xu, Qirui Zhang, Yifei Weng, Junhao Xiao, Guangming Lu & Zhiqiang Zhang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China

    Guangming Lu & Zhiqiang Zhang

  4. Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 149 Thirteenth Street, Suite 2301, Charlestown, MA, 02129, USA

    Steven M. Stufflebeam & Zhiqiang Zhang

  5. Department of Neurology, Jinling Hospital, Nanjing University School of Medicine, Nanjing, 210002, China

    Fang Yang

  6. Department of Neurology, Children’s Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China

    Yan He & Zheng Hu

  7. Institute of Neurology, Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hefei, China

    Yin Xu

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  1. Yin Xu
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Correspondence to Guangming Lu or Zhiqiang Zhang.

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Yin Xu, Qiang Xu, Qirui Zhang, Steven M. Stufflebeam, Fang Yang, Yan He, Zheng Hu, Yifei Weng, Junhao Xiao, Guangming Lu, and Zhiqiang Zhang declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Xu, Y., Xu, Q., Zhang, Q. et al. Influence of epileptogenic region on brain structural changes in Rolandic epilepsy. Brain Imaging and Behavior 16, 424–434 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-021-00517-5

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