EURON and THEME joint PhD meeting

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EURON and THEME joint meeting 2011
Abnormal functional connectivity between areas
involved in emotion and executive control in
psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES)
S.J.M. van der Kruijs 1,2 , N.M.G. Bodde 1 , M.J. Vaessen 1,2 , R.H. Lazeron 1 , P.A.
Hofman 1,2 , W.H. Backes 2 , A.P. Aldenkamp 1,2 , J.F.A. Jansen 2
1 Epilepsy Center Kempenhaeghe, Heeze, Netherlands; 2 Department of Radiology, Maastricht University
Medical Center, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Introduction
Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES) are paroxysmal episodes without
epileptiform brain activity as recorded by EEG. Instead, there is positive
evidence for psychogenic factors that may underlie the seizures. One important
predisposition factor for PNES is dissociation, i.e. disrupted integration of
conscious functioning. We explored whether fMRI could identify biomarkers of
brain alterations associated with dissociation in PNES.
Methods
Patients with PNES (n=11) and healthy volunteers (n=12) completed dissociation
questionnaires (DIS-Q, DES and SDQ-20), and the Raven’s Progressive Matrices
Test. The fMRI protocol consisted of 4 scans: Resting state fMRI (rsfMRI) 1,
picture encoding, Stroop color naming, and rsfMRI 2. All MR images were preprocessed
in SPM8, and between-group differences in cerebral activation were
assessed. Subsequently, ROIs with strong activation were defined, based on
the activation patterns during the tasks, averaged over all subjects. Based on
the ROIs, functional connectivity maps were obtained from resting-state fMRI.
Multiple regression was performed to assess between-group differences (p