Faculty Collaboration Database

A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of cognitive control and neurosensory deficits in mild traumatic brain injury. Hum Brain Mapp 2015 Nov;36(11):4394-406

Date

10/24/2015

Pubmed ID

26493161

Pubmed Central ID

PMC4620581

DOI

10.1002/hbm.22930

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-84955682675 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   22 Citations

Abstract

Mild traumatic brain injury patients (mTBI) frequently report symptoms of increased distractability and sensory disturbances during mutisensory stimulation. These common post-concussive symptoms could putatively result from dysfunction within the cognitive control network (CCN; top-down) or from unisensory cortex (bottom-up) itself. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and high-resolution structural data were therefore prospectively collected during a multisensory (audio-visual) cognitive control task from 46 mTBI patients within 3 weeks of injury and 46 matched healthy controls (HC), with a subset of participants returning at 4 months. Multisensory stimuli were presented at two frequencies to manipulate cognitive and perceptual load. Patients self-reported more cognitive, emotional, somatic, vestibular and visual symptoms relative to HC, which improved, but did not entirely resolve, over the 4 month follow-up period. There were no group differences in behavior or functional activation during cognitive control (incongruent--congruent trials). In contrast, patients exhibited abnormal activation within different regions of visual cortex that depended on whether attention was focused on auditory or visual information streams. Patients also exhibited increased activation within bilateral inferior parietal lobules during higher cognitive/perceptual loads, suggesting a compensatory mechanism to achieve similar levels of behavioral performance. Functional abnormalities within the visual cortex and inferior parietal lobules were only partially resolved at 4 months post-injury, suggesting that neural abnormalities may take longer to resolve than behavioral measures used in most clinical settings. In summary, current results indicate that abnormalities within unisensory cortex (particularly visual areas) following mTBI, which likely contribute to deficits commonly reported during multisensory stimulation.

Author List

Mayer AR, Hanlon FM, Dodd AB, Ling JM, Klimaj SD, Meier TB

Author

Timothy B. Meier PhD Associate Professor in the Neurosurgery department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adult
Attention
Auditory Perception
Brain Injuries
Cerebral Cortex
Cognition Disorders
Executive Function
Female
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Psychomotor Performance
Visual Perception
Young Adult