Abstract Details

Title The Contribution of Residual Anatomical Brain Networks in Language Recovery in Post-Stroke Aphasia

Topic Aging, Dementia, and Behavioral Neurology

Presentation(s) P5 - Poster Session 5 (5:30 PM-6:30 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 9-004

Objective To test the contributions of spared parts of the anatomical brain network to language recovery in patients with post-stroke aphasia.

Background Most analyses of post-stroke recovery from aphasia examine the relationship between local lesions or remaining brain regions and language performance. However, the roles of spared anatomical connections following injury are less frequently examined. Here, we examined the relationship between the residual anatomical connectome and WAB aphasia scores.

Design/Methods A brain network can be depicted mathematically as a graph G = {N, E}, where N is a set of nodes (such as neurons or brain regions) and E is a set of edges (such as white matter connections) among pairs of nodes. Following an anatomical imputation procedure to standardize brain parcellation, we examined fractional anisotropy (FA) along streamlines estimated in anatomical networks reconstructed from diffusion tractography in the Lausanne parcellation (83 regions). To examine the relationship between tract FA and language performance, we identified network edges that were reliably observed in an aging control sample (39 subjects). Then, we independently correlated the FA tract values with WAB subscale performances in 31 subjects with post-stroke aphasia.

Results

We found significant individual correlations between WAB subscale scores and white matter tract FA (p < 0.05) and mapped them to cortical and subcortical spatial groups in the left and right hemisphere of the Lausanne parcellation. The WAB performance corresponded to broad right hemispheric cortical-subcortical and cortical-cortical connectivity in Spontaneous Speech, left hemispheric subcortical-subcortical connectivity in Auditory verbal comprehension, right hemispheric subcortical-subcortical connectivity in the Naming and word finding and right hemispheric cortical-subcortical connectivity in Repetition task.

Conclusions

Distinct subcortical-cortical pathways moderate language performance in post-stroke aphasia. Future studies could examine the behavioral contributions of specific network pathways compared to global network disruption.

Authors/Disclosures
PRESENTER	No disclosure on file
Peter Turkeltaub, MD, PhD (Georgetown University)	Dr. Turkeltaub has nothing to disclose.
	No disclosure on file
John D. Medaglia, PhD (Drexel University)	The institution of Dr. Medaglia has received research support from National Institutes of Health.

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