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- Title
Long-range white matter fibres and post-stroke verbal and non-verbal cognition.
- Authors
Roth, Rebecca W; Blackett, Deena Schwen; Gleichgerrcht, Ezequiel; Wilmskoetter, Janina; Rorden, Chris; Newman-Norlund, Roger; Sen, Souvik; Fridriksson, Julius; Busby, Natalie; Bonilha, Leonardo
- Abstract
Among stroke survivors, linguistic and non-linguistic impairments exhibit substantial inter-individual variability. Stroke lesion volume and location do not sufficiently explain outcomes, and the neural mechanisms underlying the severity of aphasia or non-verbal cognitive deficits remain inadequately understood. Converging evidence supports the idea that white matter is particularly susceptible to ischaemic injury, and long-range fibres are commonly associated with verbal and non-verbal function. Here, we investigated the relationship among post-stroke aphasia severity, cognition, and white matter integrity. Eighty-seven individuals in the chronic stage of stroke underwent diffusion MRI and behavioural testing, including language and cognitive measures. We used whole-brain structural connectomes from each participant to calculate the ratio of long-range fibres to short-range fibres. We found that a higher proportion of long-range fibres was associated with lower aphasia severity, more accurate picture naming, and increased performance on non-verbal semantic memory/processing and non-verbal reasoning while controlling for lesion volume, key damage areas, age, and years post stroke. Our findings corroborate the hypothesis that, after accounting for age and lesion anatomy, inter-individual differences in post-stroke aphasia severity, verbal, and non-verbal cognitive outcomes are related to the preservation of long-range white matter fibres beyond the lesion.
- Subjects
WHITE matter (Nerve tissue); FIBERS; DIFFUSION magnetic resonance imaging; SEMANTIC memory; COGNITION
- Publication
Brain Communications, 2024, Vol 6, Issue 4, p1
- ISSN
2632-1297
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/braincomms/fcae262