Impaired rich club and increased local connectivity in children with traumatic brain injury: Local support for the rich?

ABSTRACT: Recent evidence has shown the presence of a "rich club" in the brain, which constitutes a core network of highly interconnected and spatially distributed brain regions, important for high-order cognitive processes. This study aimed to map the rich club organization in 17 young patients with moderate to severe TBI (15.71?±?1.75 years) in the chronic stage of recovery and 17 age- and gender-matched controls. Probabilistic tractography was performed on diffusion weighted imaging data to construct the edges of the structural connectomes using number of streamlines as edge weight. In addition, the whole-brain network was divided into a rich club network, a local network and a feeder network connecting the latter two. Functional outcome was measured with a parent questionnaire for executive functioning. Our results revealed a significantly decreased rich club organization (p values?

SUBMITTER: Verhelst H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6866640 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature