Anatomical and functional alterations in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy: voxel-based morphometry and resting-state fMRI study

Abstract

Purpose: We aimed to investigate the structural and functional brain abnormalities in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) patients with photosensitivity. Methods: Thirty JME patients, 15 of (50%) who were photosensitive (JME-PS) and 32 healthy controls (HC) were involved in the study. The high-resolution T1-weighted MRI data were acquired for voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis, and resting-state functional MRI data were acquired for functional connectivity (FC) analysis. The regions that showed significant differences in VBM analyses, were used as regions of interest in FC analysis for the comparisons between the whole JME group, which consist of PS and non-photosensitive (NPS) JME subgroups, and HCs. Cluster-level significance was set at family-wise error (FWE) corrected p < 0.05. Results: The left postcentral gyrus showed decreased connectivity in the right dominant bilateral middle cingulate gyrus, the right dominant bilateral supplementary motor area, and right superior frontal gyrus whereas left cerebellum crus 1 showed decreased connectivity in right cerebellum lobule IX and dorsal pons in JME-PS compared to the HCs (pFWE-corr = 0.0014, pFWE-corr = 0.0436,respectively).The left middle temporal gyrus showed decreased connectivity with the left dominant bilateral superior frontal gyrus in JME-PS compared to JME-NPS (pFWE-corr = 0.0016). Left precentral gyrus showed; i) increased connectivity with left superior frontal gyrus in JME-NPS compared to HCs (pFWE-corr = 0.0015), ii) decreased connectivity with right dominant bilateral calcarine fissure and occipital pole in JME-PS compared to JME-NPS (pFWE-corr = 0.0103).