Use of the Yale Brain Atlas to Determine Signatures of Cortical Thinning
Abstract number :
3.369
Submission category :
5. Neuro Imaging / 5A. Structural Imaging
Year :
2024
Submission ID :
591
Source :
www.aesnet.org
Presentation date :
12/9/2024 12:00:00 AM
Published date :
Authors :
Presenting Author: Alexander King, BS – UC Berkeley
Sami Obaid, MD, PhD – Universite de Montreal
Kelly Pu, – Duke University School of Medicine
Omar Chishti, BS – Max Planck School of Cognition
Evan Collins, BS – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hari McGrath, MBBS – East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
David King-Stephens, MD – UC Irvine
Robert Duckrow, MD – Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Dennis Spencer, MD – Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Hitten Zaveri, PhD – Yale University
Rationale: Cortical thinning is a natural process that occurs with age. This phenomenon is often accelerated in patients that have epilepsy. Global cortical thinning has been reported in patients with frontal and temporal lobe onset seizures compared to normal controls. This study looks at how cortical thinning relates to the area of seizure onset and in regions connected to it.
Methods: Fifty-three drug resistant, non-lesional patients from the Yale Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and 215 control subjects from the Human Connectome Project were included in the analysis. Seizure localization was determined by invasive EEG in 14 patients with frontal lobe, 4 with parietal lobe and 35 with temporal lobe seizure onset. Patients with bilateral and multi-lobar onsets were excluded. Cortical thickness maps were calculated using non-skull stripped T1 weighted MR scans co-registered to the MNI152 brain using Advanced Normalization Tools (ANTs). The Yale Brain Atlas, a neuroanatomically defined brain atlas composed of 690 parcels, was then used to extract cortical thickness values for each parcel.
Results: In normal subjects, cortical thickness varies across the cortex with the thinnest cortex being in the parietal lobes and the thickest cortex in the temporal lobe. Variable loss of cortical thickness has been reported across the brain in patients with epilepsy. Between groups, those with parietal lobe onsets demonstrated the greatest degree of global thinning followed by temporal and frontal lobe onsets. Global cortical thickness was lower in parietal lobe patients in comparison to temporal lobe patients (p < 0.001, t-test) and cortical thickness was lower in temporal lobe patients in comparison to frontal lobe patients (p < 0.001). In an attempt to understand the possible effect of seizure propagation, we observed a trend towards significance such that brain parcels with strong white matter connectivity to the seizure onset area had greater thinning compared to those with poor white matter connectivity to the seizure onset area.
Neuro Imaging