Abstract #3357

Studying Functional Connectivity Strength Between the Primary Motor Cortex (PMC) and the Supplementary Motor Area (SMA) in Brain Tumor Patients Using Resting State BOLD FMRI

Bob Lei Hou¹, Bharat Biswal², Henning U. Voss³, Nicole M. Petrovich Brennan⁴, Kyung Peck⁵, Andrei I. Holodny⁴

¹Medical Physics and Radiology , MSKCC, New York City, NY, USA; ²Radiology, UMDNJ, Newark, NJ, USA; ³Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, NY, USA; ⁴Radiology, MSKCC, New York City, NY, USA; ⁵Medical Physics and Radiology, MSKCC, New York City, NY, USA

This study evaluated connectivity strength between PMC and SMA for healthy controls and patients with brain tumors. Results for the brain tumor patients suggest that there is a connection between the PMC and SMA irrespective of tumor type and distance between the cortics to the tumor. The tumors reduces the BOLD signal in the PMCs meanwhile increase it in the SMA.The overall mean of the SMA/PMC BOLD siganl ratio were 0.51 and 0.83 for the normal and tumor groups, respectively. The tumors seem to increase the amplitude of the low frequency fluctuations resulting from local blood flow and respiration in the SMA while decreasing the amplitude of these fluctuations in PMC.