Abstract
ObjectiveAdolescents with d‐transposition of the great arteries (d‐TGA) who had the arterial switch operation in infancy have been found to have structural brain differences compared to healthy controls. We used cortical thickness measurements obtained from structural brain MRI to determine group differences in global brain organization using a graph theoretical approach.MethodsNinety‐two d‐TGA subjects and 49 controls were scanned using one of two identical 1.5‐Tesla MRI systems. Mean cortical thickness was obtained from 34 regions per hemisphere using Freesurfer. A linear model was used for each brain region to adjust for subject age, sex, and scanning location. Structural connectivity for each group was inferred based on the presence of high inter‐regional correlations of the linear model residuals, and binary connectivity matrices were created by thresholding over a range of correlation values for each group. Graph theory analysis was performed using packages in R. Permutation tests were performed to determine significance of between‐group differences in global network measures.ResultsWithin‐group connectivity patterns were qualitatively different between groups. At lower network densities, controls had significantly more long‐range connections. The location and number of hub regions differed between groups: controls had a greater number of hubs at most network densities. The control network had a significant rightward asymmetry compared to the d‐TGA group at all network densities.ConclusionsUsing graph theory analysis of cortical thickness correlations, we found differences in brain structural network organization among d‐TGA adolescents compared to controls. These may be related to the white matter and gray matter differences previously found in this cohort, and in turn may be related to the cognitive deficits this cohort presents.
Highlights
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most commonly occurring congenital anomaly (Tennant, Pearce, Bythell, & Rankin, 2010)
D-transposition of the great arteries (d-TGA) is a form of CHD that is corrected by the arterial switch operation using cardiopulmonary bypass in early infancy
In a separate analysis of a subset of the same d-TGA adolescents, we have shown that differences exist in global brain organization based on white matter connectivity (Panigrahy et al, 2015)
Summary
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most commonly occurring congenital anomaly (Tennant, Pearce, Bythell, & Rankin, 2010). Networks constructed from cortical thickness data possess the “small-world” property and have distinct modules/communities of vertices, similar to network qualities derived from DTI tractography and resting-state functional MRI data (Achard, Salvador, Whitcher, Suckling, & Bullmore, 2006; Chen, He, Rosa-Neto, Germann, & Evans, 2008; Chen, Liu, Gross, & Beaulieu, 2013; He, Chen, & Evans, 2007; Iturria-Medina, Sotero, Canales- Rodríguez, Alemán-Gómez, & Melie-García, 2008) These properties are present as early as 1 month of age and persist throughout development (Fan et al, 2011; Khundrakpam et al, 2013). We use a graph theoretical approach to analyze brain networks based on cortical thickness correlations to compare brain structure in a group of adolescents born with d-TGA corrected surgically in early infancy with that of typically developing control adolescents
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