The generation and validation of white matter connectivity importance maps

Both the size and location of injury in the brain influences the type and severity of cognitive or sensorimotor dysfunction. However, even with advances in MR imaging and analysis, the correspondence between lesion location and clinical deficit remains poorly understood. Here, structural and diffusion images from 14 healthy subjects are used to create spatially unbiased white matter connectivity importance maps that quantify the amount of disruption to the overall brain network that would be incurred if that region were compromised. Some regions in the white matter that were identified as highly important by such maps have been implicated in strategic infarct dementia and linked to various attention tasks in previous studies. Validation of the maps is performed by investigating the correlations of the importance maps' predicted cognitive deficits in a group of 15 traumatic brain injury patients with their cognitive test scores measuring attention and memory. While no correlation was found between amount of white matter injury and cognitive test scores, significant correlations (r>0.68, p<0.006) were found when including location information contained in the importance maps. These tools could be used by physicians to improve surgical planning, diagnosis, and assessment of disease severity in a variety of pathologies like multiple sclerosis, trauma, and stroke.