Diffusion tensor imaging in traumatic brain injury to examine pathological links with social
-
1
University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Australia
Background
Severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is highly heterogeneous across sufferers. Despite this, TBI patients commonly develop diffuse axonal injury as a result from the neuronal degeneration after injury, which can extend deep into the brain to the corpus callosum (CC). Additionally, TBI patients suffer chronic social and emotional deficits resulting from injury. The present study examined the relationship between directional diffusivity of the white matter tracts within regions of the CC, measured by Fractional anisotropy (FA), and social cognition, measured by The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), in TBI.
Method
Diffusion MRI scans were obtained from 17 participants with moderate to severe TBI and 17 matched controls. Participants were administered the TASIT and scores were calculated for emotion evaluation and social inference. Deterministic DTI was performed to obtain FA values from three regions of the CC: genu, body and splenium. TASIT scores and FA values were compared between groups and cc regions. FA values were correlated with TASIT scores.
Results
TBI participants scored significantly lower in both emotion evaluation and social inference compared to controls. TBI participants had significantly lower FA values overall, however within both groups, FA values were highest in the splenium and lowest in the genu. Higher scores on the TASIT were related to higher FA values across all regions of the CC except the genu.
Conclusions
Overall, TBI participants had lower directional diffusivity of white matter within the CC, indexed by FA, as well as deficits in emotion evaluation and social inference. Emotion evaluation and social inference were both highly related to white matter quality in the CC body and splenium.
References
Christidi, F., Bigler, E. D., McCauley, S. R., Schnelle, K. P., Merkley, T. L., Mors, M. B., ... & Wilde, E. A. (2011). Diffusion tensor imaging of the perforant pathway zone and its relation to memory function in patients with severe traumatic brain injury. Journal of neurotrauma, 28(5), 711-725.
Keywords:
Diffusion Tensor Imaging,
Traumatic Brain Injury,
Corpus Callosum,
The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT),
social cognition,
Diffuse Axonal Injury
Conference:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology, Sydney, Australia, 2 Dec - 4 Dec, 2015.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Psychophysiology
Citation:
Dalton
KI,
Rushby
JA,
Parks
N,
Allen
SK and
McDonald
S
(2015). Diffusion tensor imaging in traumatic brain injury to examine pathological links with social.
Conference Abstract:
ASP2015 - 25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Psychophysiology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.219.00041
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
21 Oct 2015;
Published Online:
30 Nov 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Katie I Dalton, University of New South Wales, School of Psychology, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia, k.dalton@unsw.edu.au