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Journal of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation Research | Volume 3
August 23-24, 2018 | Paris, France
Neurology and Neurological Disorders
18th International Conference on
Parietal-thalamic dysconnectivity during sustainedattentionprocessing in young adultswithTraumatic
Brain Injury
Xiaobo Li and Ziyan Wu
New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major public health problem
with potentially serious long-term neurobehavioral
sequelae. Attention deficits occur in approximately 15-
20% of TBI survivors and are the most common persistent
cognitive impairments post TBI. The consensus regarding
appropriate evaluation of attention deficits in adults with
TBI is rather limited due to lack of understanding of the
neurobiological substrate associated with this syndrome.
In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging data
during a visual sustained attention task were obtained
from 14 young adults who had history of one or multiple
diffuse axonal TBIs which were clinically confirmed at least
6 months prior the study and 15 demographically matched
normal controls. Task responsive brain activation map was
constructed for each participant using FEAT/FSL (www.fmrib.
). Between-group comparisons of whole brain
voxel-based functional activations were conducted using
unpaired two-sample t-test. Relative to controls, subjects
with TBI showed decreased activations in frontal and parietal
cortices and increased activations in bilateral thalami (Figure
1A). Based on these results, four regions of interest (ROIs)
from the right middle frontal cortex, left inferior parietal
cortex and bilateral thalami were located. The average time
series inside each ROI was calculated. Functional connectivity
between each pair of the ROIs was examined by calculating
the Pearson’s correlation coefficient of the average time series
of the two ROIs. Between-group comparisons of the functional
connectivity measures were carried out using unpaired
two-sample t-test. Multiple comparisons were corrected
using the FDR at α = 0.05. Relative to controls, subjects with
TBI showed significantly decreased functional connectivity
between the left inferior parietal cortex and right thalamus.
Parietal cortex and thalamus are key components in attention
and cognitive processing pathways. The results of decreased
functional activations in parietal region, increased functional
activations in thalamic area and reduced interactions between
these two areas during visual attention processing in patients
with TBI, thus suggest that functional alterations in parietal
cortexandthalamusmaysignificantlycontributetoTBI induced
attention deficits. Further study can focus on investigating
associations between brain imaging and attention-related
behavioral measures in TBI patients in a larger study sample.
Speaker Biography
Xiaobo Li is an Associate Professor and Director of the Computational Neuroanatomy
and Neuroinformatics lab (CNN lab) in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at
New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Dr. Li received her Ph.D. in 2004 from the
University of Birmingham, UK, on geometrical modeling in digitized data. She has
extensive research experience in developing and translating mathematical techniques
to quantitatively evaluate the structural and functional organization in the human
brain using structural MRI/fMRI/DTI data, and extensive clinical application experience
in brain development and disorders such as Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, etc.
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