Brain White Matter Impairment in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury

作者：Zheng, Weimin; Chen, Qian; Chen, Xin; Wan, Lu; Qin, Wen; Qi, Zhigang; Chen, Nan^*; Li, Kuncheng

来源：NEURAL PLASTICITY, 2017, 2017: 4671607.

DOI：10.1155/2017/4671607

• TRANSCRANIAL MAGNETIC STIMULATION
• CORTICAL REORGANIZATION
• MOTOR CORTEX
• FUNCTIONAL REORGANIZATION
• NEUROPATHIC PAIN
• ATROPHY
• DEGENERATION
• PLASTICITY
• NEURONS
• TRACT

It remains unknown whether spinal cord injury (SCI) could indirectly impair or reshape the white matter (WM) of human brain and whether these changes are correlated with injury severity, duration, or clinical performance. We choose tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) to investigate the possible changes in whole-brain white matter integrity and their associations with clinical variables in fifteen patients with SCI. Compared with the healthy controls, the patients exhibited significant decreases in WM fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left angular gyrus (AG), right cerebellum (CB), left precentral gyrus (PreCG), left lateral occipital region (LOC), left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), left supramarginal gyrus (SMG), and left postcentral gyrus (PostCG) ( p < 0.01, TFCE corrected). No significant differences were found in all diffusion indices between the complete and incomplete SCI. However, significantly negative correlation was shown between the increased radial diffusivity (RD) of left AG and total motor scores (uncorrected p < 0.05). Our findings provide evidence that SCI can cause not only direct degeneration but also transneuronal degeneration of brainWM, and these changes may be irrespective of the injury severity. The affection of left AG on rehabilitation therapies need to be further researched in the future.

• 出版日期2017
• 单位首都医科大学; 北京中医药大学; 天津医科大学