Small-World Properties Of The Brain Functional Networks In Patients With Chronic Ischemic Stroke

Objective:To explore the characteristics of small-world properties of the brain functional networks in patients with chronic ischemic stroke.Method:A total of 42 stroke patients and 25 healthy volunteers who matched stroke patients were recruited. They were scanned with BOLD-fMRI separately and the whole brain was divided into 90 districts by automated anatomical labeling (ALL). Then the correlation matrix Z (N*N, N=90) generated by Fisher Z transfermation. Two sample t-tests were used to evaluate the changes of small-world properties in stroke people.Result:Within the range of 0.1< Sparsity< 0.2, both groups satisfied the small-world properties (a> 1) and a in the experimental group was lower than the normal group. However, the clustering coefficient (Cp) and Elocal of stroke group was significantly lower than those of normal group at each threshold (P<0.05). While the Lp、Egbbal and λ did not have statistical significance.Conclusion:The functional brain networks in both healthy and stroke’s people still satisfied the small-world properties, but parts of the small world properties in patients with stroke have changed. The reduced small world properties in the stroke patients, as well as the Cp and Elocal, suggest that the ability of information integration in brain areas has impaired, ability of local information transmission has dropped, and the ability of resisting the random attack also has weakened.