Disrupted Brain Functional Organization in Epilepsy Revealed by Graph Theory Analysis

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Network Science
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Epilepsy significantly impacts brain function.
• Understanding brain network reorganization is crucial for epilepsy research.
• Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a key tool for studying brain networks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To model brain functional networks in epilepsy using graph theory.
• To investigate large-scale brain network reorganizational changes in epilepsy patients compared to healthy controls.
• To analyze alterations at whole-brain, functional network, and individual brain region levels.

Main Methods:

• Applied graph theory methods to resting-state fMRI data.
• Constructed brain functional networks based on resting-state functional connectivity.
• Utilized a minimum spanning tree and proportional thresholding approach to create sparse connectivity matrices.

Main Results:

• Epilepsy patients showed decreased local efficiency but increased global efficiency at the whole-brain level.
• Significant alterations in functional connections were observed between the default mode network, subcortical network, and other networks.
• The cingulo-opercular task control network exhibited a significant proportion of decreasing connections.
• Individual brain regions displayed distinct patterns of reorganizational changes.

Conclusions:

• Epilepsy consistently alters brain efficiency at the whole-brain level.
• Functional networks and individual brain regions exhibit differential reorganizational patterns in epilepsy.
• These findings provide insights into the complex neural dynamics underlying epilepsy.