Abstract
Long-term headache attacks may cause human brain network reorganization in patients with migraine. In the current study, we calculated the topologic properties of functional networks based on the Brainnetome atlas using graph theory analysis in 29 female migraineurs without aura (MWoA) and in 29 female age-matched healthy controls. Compared with controls, female MWoA exhibited that the network properties altered, and the nodal centralities decreased/increased in some brain areas. In particular, the right posterior insula and the left medial superior occipital gyrus of patients exhibited significantly decreased nodal centrality compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, female MWoA exhibited a disrupted functional network, and notably, the two sub-regions of the right posterior insula exhibited decreased functional connectivity with many other brain regions. The topological metrics of functional networks in female MWoA included alterations in the nodal centrality of brain regions and disrupted connections between pair regions primarily involved in the discrimination of sensory features of pain, pain modulation or processing and sensory integration processing. In addition, the posterior insula decreased the nodal centrality, and exhibited disrupted connectivity with many other brain areas in female migraineurs, which suggests that the posterior insula plays an important role in female migraine pathology.
Highlights
The human brain is a complex system that can be modeled as an extremely complex network consisting of edges and nodes[16,17,18]
Graph theory analysis based on the Brainnetome atlas was used to explore and investigate the topological organization of the functional networks of female migraineurs without aura (MWoA), and we compared the differences in topological organizations of networks constructed by the Anatomic Labeling (AAL) atlas and the Brainnetome atlas
The functional networks of female MWoA and healthy controls had higher clustering coefficients (Cp) and similar characteristic path lengths (Lp) than the random networks, which indicated that both female MWoA and healthy controls exhibited typical small-world topology properties
Summary
The human brain is a complex system that can be modeled as an extremely complex network consisting of edges (connections between pair regions) and nodes (brain areas)[16,17,18]. The insula has not been reported to be abnormal in previous graph theory studies based on the AAL atlas[19,20,21,22], which may be due to its coarse sub-regions. We think that the Brainnetome atlas could detect the local abnormal or the disrupted functional connectivity of the sub-regions of insula in migraineurs, and the functional changes of insula may be involved in its structural alterations. We hypothesized that the topological properties of functional networks, the functional connectivity patterns and the volume of the insular sub-regions would be altered in female MWoA
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