Elsevier

NeuroImage: Clinical

Volume 7, 2015, Pages 555-561
NeuroImage: Clinical

Multivariate pattern analysis reveals anatomical connectivity differences between the left and right mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2014.12.018Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • The left mTLE can be identified from the right mTLE with 93.0% accuracy.

  • The left mTLE and right mTLE exhibited a different connectivity pattern in cortical-limbic network and cerebellum.

  • Anatomical network differences may account for the variance of emotional and memory deficit between the left and right mTLE.

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated differences of clinical signs and functional brain network organizations between the left and right mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), but the anatomical connectivity differences underlying functional variance between the left and right mTLE remain uncharacterized. We examined 43 (22 left, 21 right) mTLE patients with hippocampal sclerosis and 39 healthy controls using diffusion tensor imaging. After the whole-brain anatomical networks were constructed for each subject, multivariate pattern analysis was applied to classify the left mTLE from the right mTLE and extract the anatomical connectivity differences between the left and right mTLE patients. The classification results reveal 93.0% accuracy for the left mTLE versus the right mTLE, 93.4% accuracy for the left mTLE versus controls and 90.0% accuracy for the right mTLE versus controls. Compared with the right mTLE, the left mTLE exhibited a different connectivity pattern in the cortical-limbic network and cerebellum. The majority of the most discriminating anatomical connections were located within or across the cortical-limbic network and cerebellum, thereby indicating that these disease-related anatomical network alterations may give rise to a portion of the complex of emotional and memory deficit between the left and right mTLE. Moreover, the orbitofrontal gyrus, cingulate cortex, hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, which exhibit high discriminative power in classification, may play critical roles in the pathophysiology of mTLE. The current study demonstrated that anatomical connectivity differences between the left mTLE and the right mTLE may have the potential to serve as a neuroimaging biomarker to guide personalized diagnosis of the left and right mTLE.

Keywords

Temporal lobe epilepsy
Diffusion tensor imaging
Anatomical connectivity
Classification
Cortical-limbic network
Cerebellum

Cited by (0)

1

The authors contributed equally to the manuscript.