Interhemispheric coherence of EEG rhythms in children: Maturation and differentiation in corpus callosum dysgenesis

To evaluate the evolution of interhemispheric coherences (ICo) in background and spindle frequency bands during childhood and use it to identify individuals with corpus callosum dysgenesis (CCd).

A monocentric cohort of children aged from 0.25 to 15 years old, consisting of 13 children with CCd and 164 without, was analyzed. The ICo of background activity (ICO_BckgrdA), sleep spindles (ICO_spindles), and their sum (_sICO) were calculated. The impact of age, gender, and CC status on the ICo was evaluated, and the _sICO was used to discriminate children with or without CCd.

ICO_BckgrdA, ICO_spindles and sICO increased significantly with age without any effect of gender (p < 10^-4), in both groups. The regression equations of the different ICo were stronger, with adjusted R2 values of 0.54, 0.35, and 0.57, respectively. The ICo was lower in children with CCd compared to those without CCd (p < 10^-4 for all comparisons). The area under the precision recall curves for predicting CCd using _sICO was 0.992 with 98.9 % sensitivity and 87.5 % specificity.

ICo of spindles and background activity evolve in parallel to brain maturation and depends on the integrity of the corpus callosum. sICO could be an effective diagnostic biomarker for screening children with interhemispheric dysfunction.