Abigail Livny-Ezer1,
2, Mark Weiser3, 4, Tammar Kushnir2,
4, Sagi Harnof5, Dardo Tomasi6, 7,
Chen Hoffman2, Anat Biegon8, 9
1J.
Sagol Neuroscience Center, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel; 2Diagnostic
Imaging Dept., Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel; 3Dept.
of Psychiatry, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel; 4Sackler
Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel; 5Dept.
of Neurosurgery, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel; 6National
Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States; 7Medical Dept.
, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, United States; 8Medical
Dept., Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, United States; 9Dept.
of Neurology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United States
Survivors of Traumatic brain injury (TBI) suffer from cognitive deficits. The aim of this study was to assess the influence of injury severity on patterns of brain activation during a working memory task with fMRI. Twelve mild, 10 moderate-severe patients and 19 controls performed an N-back task for letters. Activations in the low memory load did not appear to be related to injury severity. High memory load activated additional areas in the TBI groups compared to controls and was dependent on injury severity. In addition, TBI patients presented a different pattern of functional connectivity mapping in resting-state compared to controls.
Keywords