Study On The Abnormality Of Brain White Matter Function And Network Topology In Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a common neuropsychiatric disease caused by abnormal discharge of neurons.General tonic-clonic seizure epilepsy(GTCS),a common subtype of epilepsy,is characterized by widespread spikes and spikes wave in the brain.It is difficult to find obvious organic variations by conventional magnetic resonance imaging detection methods.GTCS is associated with genetic factors,and its physiological and pathological mechanisms have not been fully understood.In past years,many scholars found abnormal patterns between the cortex-cortex network and the thalamus-cortex network in GTCS patients.However,these studies mainly focus on the function of the brain’s gray matter and the structure of the white matter fiber bundles,and the functional signals of the white matter are relatively scarce.The reason is that previous researchers believed that white matter functional signals belong to noise signals.Recent studies have found that white matter,like gray matter,also presents the characteristics of blood oxygenation level dependent(BOLD)signal fluctuations.Therefore,this paper uses resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging(RS-f MRI)data from the GTCS patient group and the healthy control group to explore the abnormal phenomenon of functional signals of white matter in the brain in GTCS diseases.Firstly,the functional connectivity density(FCD)was used to analyze the white matter functional signals of the two groups of subjects.It was found that the functional connectivity density of the inferior corticospinal tract,the posterior cerebellar tract and the visual superficial white-matter system in GTCS patients was significantly increased.Then these abnormal areas were further analyzed.The functional connection analysis of the seed point found that the functional connection between the abnormal area and the longitudinal tract on the deep white matter network was significantly increased.These abnormal white matter regions are all related to the sensorimotor regulation of the human brain.The results of the study on the functional activities of white matter in GTCS patients suggest that the function of white matter in GTCS patients is also involved in the regulation of brain behavior to some extent.Secondly,the functional network of white matter in the brain of GTCS was analyzed with the knowledge system of graph theory.It was found that the functional network of white matter in GTCS patients was similar to that in healthy subjects,both of which had the "small-world" attribute,but the overall pattern of network organization was more random.In addition,the regions with significant increases and decreases in local topological attributes were both related to sensorimotor in the brain.Combining the local topological attributes of white matter functional network with the partial anisotropy scores of structural indicators,the abnormal coupling of white matter functions and structures was explored.The results showed that patients with GTCS had significant increases and decreases in different functional and structural coupling indicators.This suggests that the white matter in GTCS disease is not only significantly abnormal in a single mode of function or structure,but also manifests in the fusion relationship between multiple modes.In summary,this study found that the pathophysiological mechanism of GTCS patients is also reflected in the white matter functional signals.It is proved again that the white matter functional signal is not noise signal,but meaningful signal.This study provides new evidence for the pathophysiological mechanism of GTCS,and provides a new idea and exploration direction for the future research on the neuropathological mechanism of GTCS.