Functional Connectivity in Posterior Cingulate Cortex Alters in Brain Concussion Patients at the Acute Stage

Armin Iraji¹, Valerie Mika², Jie Yang², Annalise Rahman², Grace Ma², Robert Welch², Randall Benson², Scott Millis², Hamid Soltanian-Zadeh³, Ewart Mark Haacke², Zhifeng Kou²

mTBI affects over 1 million emergency visits in the United States each year. Most of them have negative findings in clinical imaging in emergency department. However, attention and memory deficits are wide-spread symptoms in mTBI patients. We hypothesize that mTBI is associated with alterations in the activities in PCC and functional connectivity at rest. Results demonstrate that a) mTBI patients have alterations in their resting-state functional connectivity in PCC and related areas at the acute stage, and b) this functional connectivity change may reflect their memory symptoms. This work could have potential applications in clinical diagnosis of mTBI.