Study: Disruptions in brain connectivity may explain TBI-related cognitive deficits

– Drs. Dan Kraw­czyk and Kih­wan Han review MRI scans. Cred­it: Cen­ter for Brain­Health, Randy Anderson

Brain con­nec­tiv­i­ty dis­rup­tions may explain cog­ni­tive deficits in peo­ple with brain injury (UT-Dal­las release):

“Cog­ni­tive impair­ment fol­low­ing a trau­mat­ic brain injury (TBI) is com­mon, often adverse­ly affect­ing qual­i­ty of life for those 1.7 mil­lion Amer­i­cans who expe­ri­ence a TBI each year. Researchers at the Cen­ter for Brain­Health at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las have iden­ti­fied com­plex brain con­nec­tiv­i­ty pat­terns in indi­vid­u­als with chron­ic phas­es of trau­mat­ic brain injury which may explain long term high­er order cog­ni­tive func­tion deficits.

A study recent­ly pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Inter­na­tion­al Neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal Soci­ety found that indi­vid­u­als who are at least six months post-injury exhib­it between-net­work, long-range and inter-hemi­spher­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty disruptions.

“Much research has focused on sep­a­rat­ing out indi­vid­ual brain networks…This is the first study of its kind to show the inter­cor­re­la­tions among dif­fer­ent net­works and dis­rup­tions among them in indi­vid­u­als with TBI.”

Study: Dis­rupt­ed Intrin­sic Con­nec­tiv­i­ty among Default, Dor­sal Atten­tion, and Fron­topari­etal Con­trol Net­works in Indi­vid­u­als with Chron­ic Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury (Jour­nal of Inter­na­tion­al Neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal Society)

• Objec­tives: Indi­vid­u­als with chron­ic trau­mat­ic brain injury (TBI) often show detri­men­tal deficits in high­er order cog­ni­tive func­tions requir­ing coor­di­na­tion of mul­ti­ple brain net­works. Although assess­ing TBI-relat­ed deficits in high­er order cog­ni­tion in the con­text of net­work dys­func­tion is promis­ing, few stud­ies have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gat­ed altered inter­ac­tions among mul­ti­ple net­works in chron­ic TBI.
• Con­clu­sion: Our find­ings sug­gest that assess­ing mul­ti­ple net­works-of-inter­est simul­ta­ne­ous­ly will allow us to bet­ter under­stand deficits in goal-direct­ed cog­ni­tion and oth­er high­er order cog­ni­tive phe­nom­e­na in chron­ic TBI. Future research will be need­ed to bet­ter under­stand the behav­ioral con­se­quences relat­ed to these net­work disruptions.

To learn more:

• Sci­en­tists issue a call to action for TBI patients to ben­e­fit from lat­est neu­ro­science findings
• Next: Smell tests to help detect brain injury and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive ailments