Functional neuroimaging abnormalities in idiopathic generalized epilepsy. Neuroimage Clin 2014;6:455-62
Date
11/11/2014Pubmed ID
25383319Pubmed Central ID
PMC4221627DOI
10.1016/j.nicl.2014.10.008Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84910069482 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 35 CitationsAbstract
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques have been used to quantitatively assess focal and network abnormalities. Idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) is characterized by bilateral synchronous spike-wave discharges on electroencephalography (EEG) but normal clinical MRI. Dysfunctions involving the neocortex, particularly the prefrontal cortex, and thalamus likely contribute to seizure activity. To identify possible morphometric and functional differences in the brains of IGE patients and normal controls, we employed measures of thalamic volumes, cortical thickness, gray-white blurring, fractional anisotropy (FA) measures from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (fALFF) in thalamic subregions from resting state functional MRI. Data from 27 patients with IGE and 27 age- and sex-matched controls showed similar thalamic volumes, cortical thickness and gray-white contrast. There were no differences in FA values on DTI in tracts connecting the thalamus and prefrontal cortex. Functional analysis revealed decreased fALFF in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) subregion of the thalamus in patients with IGE. We provide minimum detectable effect sizes for each measure used in the study. Our analysis indicates that fMRI-based methods are more sensitive than quantitative structural techniques for characterizing brain abnormalities in IGE.
Author List
McGill ML, Devinsky O, Wang X, Quinn BT, Pardoe H, Carlson C, Butler T, Kuzniecky R, Thesen TAuthor
Chad Carlson MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of WisconsinMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultAnisotropy
Brain
Brain Mapping
Diffusion Tensor Imaging
Epilepsy, Generalized
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Middle Aged
Neural Pathways
Prefrontal Cortex
Thalamus
Young Adult
