How do Tumors in the Motor System Affect the Structural Connectome?
New Findings by MoA Researcher Lucius Fekonja and Colleagues Published in »Communications Biology«
Distribution of the patients’ lesions. Copyright: Lucius Fekonja
How do tumors in the motor system affect the structural connectome? Tumors and their location distinctly alter both local and global brain connectivity within the ipsilesional hemisphere of glioma patients. This study, led by Cluster Member Lucius Fekonja, links the complex relationships between function and the underlying matter, the brain's white matter, and demonstrates how tumor activity affects the cerebral network using graph analysis and network-based statistics. The work was done in the framework of Cutting/ Adaptive Digital Twin and initiates its new Cluster phase by enriching our understanding of structural characteristics of active materials, their functional and scientific implications in clinical and translational medicine and neuroscience. The publication in »Communications Biology« further highlights the interdisciplinary aspect of the study.
Abstract
Gliomas that infiltrate networks and systems, such as the motor system, often lead to substantial functional impairment in multiple systems. Network-based statistics (NBS) allow to assess local network differences and graph theoretical analyses enable investigation of global and local network properties. Here, we used network measures to characterize glioma-related decreases in structural connectivity by comparing the ipsi- with the contralesional hemispheres of patients and correlated findings with neurological assessment. We found that lesion location resulted in differential impairment of both short and long connectivity patterns. Network analysis showed reduced global and local efficiency in the ipsilesional hemisphere compared to the contralesional hemispheric networks, which reflect the impairment of information transfer across different regions of a network.
You can read the complete open access publication here.