Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is an important but less recognized public health concern. Research shows that altered subcortical structures mediate cognitive impairment in patients with mTBI. This has been performed mostly using voxel-based morphometry methods and traditional volume measurement methods, which have certain limitations. In this study, we conducted a vertex-wise shape analysis to understand the aberrant patterns of caudate subregions and recovery from mTBI. The study involved 36 patients with mTBI and 34 matched healthy controls (HCs) observed at seven days (acute phase) and followed up for one month (subacute phase) post-injury. Different aberrant shapes of the caudate subregions were observed at the acute phase, which revealed atrophy in the bilateral dorsal medial caudate, and increase in the size of the right ventral anterior caudate in patients with mTBI related to HCs. Moreover, specific and significant shape restoration of right dorsal medial caudate in mTBI was observed at the subacute phase, which significantly associated with the cognitive function improvement of the patients. These findings suggest that the restoration of the aberrant shape atrophy of the right dorsal medial caudate plays a vital role in the improvement of cognitive function of patients with mTBI, providing an alternative clinical target for these patients.
Keywords: aberrant shape patterns; cognitive dysfunction; dorsal caudate; mild traumatic brain injury; shape recovery.