Deans' stroke musings: Functional brain network modularity predicts response to cognitive training after brain injury

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Functional brain network modularity predicts response to cognitive training after brain injury

No clue what this means, so ask your doctor to decipher it and apply to your stroke protocols.

Functional brain network modularity predicts response to cognitive training after brain injury

Katelyn L. Arnemann, BA,
Anthony J.-W. Chen, MD,
Tatjana Novakovic-Agopian, PhD,
Caterina Gratton, PhD,
Emi M. Nomura, PhD and
Mark D'Esposito, MD

+Show Affiliations

Correspondence to Katelyn L. Arnemann: klarnemann@berkeley.edu

Published online before print March 18, 2015, doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000001476 Neurology 10.1212/WNL.0000000000001476

Abstract
Full Text (PDF)

Abstract

Objective: We tested the value of measuring modularity, a graph theory metric indexing the relative extent of integration and segregation of distributed functional brain networks, for predicting individual differences in response to cognitive training in patients with brain injury.

Methods: Patients with acquired brain injury (n = 11) participated in 5 weeks of cognitive training and a comparison condition (brief education) in a crossover intervention study design. We quantified the measure of functional brain network organization, modularity, from functional connectivity networks during a state of tonic attention regulation measured during fMRI scanning before the intervention conditions. We examined the relationship of baseline modularity with pre- to posttraining changes in neuropsychological measures of attention and executive control.

Results: The modularity of brain network organization at baseline predicted improvement in attention and executive function after cognitive training, but not after the comparison intervention. Individuals with higher baseline modularity exhibited greater improvements with cognitive training, suggesting that a more modular baseline network state may contribute to greater adaptation in response to cognitive training.

Conclusions: Brain network properties such as modularity provide valuable information for understanding mechanisms that influence rehabilitation of cognitive function after brain injury, and may contribute to the discovery of clinically relevant biomarkers that could guide rehabilitation efforts.