A Comprehensive and Broad Approach to Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Adult Patients with Mild Traumatic...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Radiology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) research often shows inconsistent findings regarding resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) alterations.
• Previous studies suffer from varied analysis methods and small sample sizes, hindering reliable conclusions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate differences in whole-brain rsFC between mTBI patients and healthy controls.
• To employ comprehensive rsFC measurement methods and analyses for robust comparison.

Main Methods:

• Included 123 subjects (72 mTBI, 51 controls) with standard fMRI preprocessing.
• Utilized ROI/seed-based analyses with 4 parcellation methods and independent component analysis for rsFC.
• Measured fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and performed whole-brain multilevel statistical analysis with correction.

Main Results:

• No significant demographic differences between mTBI patients and controls.
• Individual rsFC methods revealed group differences, but these did not survive multiple comparison correction.
• No statistically significant differences in rsFC were found between groups across all methods and analyses.

Conclusions:

• Rigorous statistical correction indicates that initial mTBI effects on rsFC may not be significant.
• Previous findings of mTBI biomarkers in rsFC require re-evaluation.
• Future research should consider subject-level analyses to explore subtle and variable mTBI impacts on brain connectivity.