Abstract Details

Title Left Rostral Prefrontal Connectivity Links Thalamic Stimulation to Changes in Abstraction

Topic Movement Disorders

Presentation(s) N1 - Neuroscience in the Clinic: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory in 2022 (1:35 PM-1:50 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 002

Background DBS targeting the ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) of the thalamus for essential tremor (ET) is generally considered to have little effect on cognition. However, most studies on neuropsychological outcomes following VIM DBS have not considered interindividual variability in these outcomes and its relation to stimulation location. It is increasingly appreciated that the precise stimulation location, and its connectivity to distant brain regions, may be an important determinant of both therapeutic and secondary effects of DBS.

Objective

To determine if change in abstraction ability following thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) is related to connectivity of the stimulation location.

Design/Methods Using a retrospective cohort of 28 patients with ET receiving VIM DBS, we localized stimulation locations and estimated functional connectivity to a priori domain-general and domain-specific brain regions supporting abstraction using normative human connectome data. Pre- and postoperative performance on WASI-II Similarities and Matrix Reasoning tasks were used to assess change in semantic and visuospatial abstraction, respectively. Connectivity estimates were correlated with abstraction outcomes, and significance was assessed via permutation testing.

Results

Connectivity to left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, a domain-general region supporting abstraction, was significantly associated with change in both similarities and matrix reasoning performance (r_Sim = -0.44, r_Matrix = 0.50, p < 0.01). Connectivity to lateral anterior temporal lobes and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was differentially associated with change in similarities and matrix reasoning performance, respectively (r_Sim = -0.59, r_Matrix = 0.41, p < 0.05). Data-driven whole-brain connectivity analyses revealed distributed fronto-parieto-temporal networks associated with abstraction outcomes that included the hypothesized brain regions. These networks were predictive of their respective outcomes in a three-fold cross-validation scheme (r_Sim = 0.42, r_Matrix = 0.49, p < 0.01).

Conclusions

The results emphasize the need to evaluate neuropsychological outcomes following VIM DBS in relation to stimulation location and corroborate previous work on the neural substrates of abstraction.

Authors/Disclosures
Joey Hsu, MD PRESENTER	The institution of Mr. Hsu has received research support from Walter L. Copeland Fund of the Pittsburgh Foundation.
Dengyu Wang, MD (Tsinghua University School of Medicine)	Mr. Wang has nothing to disclose.
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