Press "Enter" to skip to content

Nucleus Basalis of Meynert Network in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Patients who underwent Epilepsy surgery evaluation for unilateral mesial Temporal Lobe Epilepsy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center were recruited for this new study. Resting-state findings were compared between patients and healthy control group participants. Patients and control group participants were 52.5% women and had a mean age of 38.5 years.

Patients were diagnosed with Epilepsy at an average of 21.1 years previously. They reported 9.1 focal aware conscious seizures per month and 6.4 focal impaired-consciousness seizures per month. Nearly 55.0% had a history of focal to bilateral tonic-clonic seizures. During video-electroencephalography, results were well localized in 87.5% and lateralized in 65.0%. During positron-electron tomography, 77.5% exhibited mesial temporal hypometabolism.

The researchers compared with control group participants, patients had decreased connectivity between NBM and broad neocortical regions. Based on the size of the seizer the patients also had less connectivity between the NBM and the whole brain on both the ipsilateral versus and contralateral sides. Patients had decreased connectivity between ipsilateral NBM and the frontoparietal cortex compared with control group participants.

Patients had a higher frequency of consciousness-impairing focal seizures had greater decreases of connectivity between the NBM and frontoparietal cortex than patients who had consciousness-sparing focal seizures.In a clustering analysis, 95.5% of regional communities exhibited similar patterns between cohorts; however, NBMs clustered in differing communities among the control group participants and patients. These altered node strengths correlated with language abilities, attention and concentration, cognitive processing and visual memory.

These data showed that important connectivity of NBM ipsilateral to the epileptogenic side of the brain and the entire limbic system, fit these data with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.83 and an accuracy of 78%.These findings may have been biased by the large diversity of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Seizure features in this patient population. The study indicated NBM connectivity was altered among patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and  maybe a key network for the pathology of this disease.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *