Altered Local Spontaneous Brain Activity in Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy: A Preliminary Resting-State fMRI Study

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the regional synchronization of brain in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME). Methods. Resting-state fMRI data were acquired from twenty-one patients with JME and twenty-two healthy subjects. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) was used to analyze the spontaneous activity in whole brain. Two-sample t-test was performed to detect the ReHo difference between two groups. Correlations between the ReHo values and features of seizures were calculated further. Key Findings. Compared with healthy controls, patients showed significantly increased ReHo in bilateral thalami and motor-related cortex regions and a substantial reduction of ReHo in cerebellum and occipitoparietal lobe. In addition, greater ReHo value in the left paracentral lobule was linked to the older age of onset in patients. Significance. These findings implicated the abnormality of thalamomotor cortical network in JME which were associated with the genesis and propagation of epileptiform activity. Moreover, our study supported that the local brain spontaneous activity is a potential tool to investigate the epileptic activity and provided important insights into understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms of JME.