Relationship between brain connectivity and language deficits : a diffusion (dMRI) and resting-state functional (rsfMRI) MRI study

Abstract

Lesion-symptom mapping of anatomical structures in the brain has been used widely in the study of anomia throughout the years. However, functional connections between picture naming ability and its underlying brain and cognitive process are still not well established. It has been reported that patients with better stroke recovery show adjustments in the topology of the brain network and the functional connections to remote brain areas (van Meer et al., 2012). The newly developed method of combining the structural connectivity and functional connectivity as a brain connectome in the Brain Connectivity Toolbox in MatLab was used to view the brain network in the current study (Rubinov & Sporns, 2010). Results showed that the local efficiencies of left superior frontal gyrus and left superior parietal lobule were significantly correlated with the memory ability of patients recovering from stroke. Also, the memory ability and auditory attention ability of the patients were significantly correlated with the picture naming and sentence construction ability. The current study provides preliminary evidence on the functional neurological contribution of the memory ability of recovering stroke patients. Furthermore, a strong significant relationship between cognitive functions, e.g. working memory and auditory attention, and picture-naming ability was revealed, which may be valuable for the planning of in intervention with patients who have anomia.