Resting-State Beta-Band Recovery Network Related to Cognitive Improvement After Stroke

Sandra Pusil; Lucía Torres-Simon; Brenda Chino; María Eugenia López; Leonides Canuet; Álvaro Bilbao; Fernando Maestú; Nuria Paúl

doi:10.3389/fneur.2022.838170

Resting-State Beta-Band Recovery Network Related to Cognitive Improvement After Stroke

Front Neurol. 2022 Feb 25:13:838170. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2022.838170. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Sandra Pusil¹, Lucía Torres-Simon¹, Brenda Chino², María Eugenia López¹, Leonides Canuet¹, Álvaro Bilbao³, Fernando Maestú¹, Nuria Paúl¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Experimental Psychology, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
² Institute of Neuroscience, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
³ National Centre for Brain Injury Treatment, Centro de Referencia Estatal de Atención Al Daño Cerebral (CEADAC), Madrid, Spain.

Abstract

Background: Stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide and it causes important long-term cognitive and physical deficits that hamper patients' daily activity. Neuropsychological rehabilitation (NR) has increasingly become more important to recover from cognitive disability and to improve the functionality and quality of life of these patients. Since in most stroke cases, restoration of functional connectivity (FC) precedes or accompanies cognitive and behavioral recovery, understanding the electrophysiological signatures underlying stroke recovery mechanisms is a crucial scientific and clinical goal.

Methods: For this purpose, a longitudinal study was carried out with a sample of 10 stroke patients, who underwent two neuropsychological assessments and two resting-state magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings, before and after undergoing a NR program. Moreover, to understand the degree of cognitive and neurophysiological impairment after stroke and the mechanisms of recovery after cognitive rehabilitation, stroke patients were compared to 10 healthy controls matched for age, sex, and educational level.

Findings: After intra and inter group comparisons, we found the following results: (1) Within the stroke group who received cognitive rehabilitation, almost all cognitive domains improved relatively or totally; (2) They exhibit a pattern of widespread increased in FC within the beta band that was related to the recovery process (there were no significant differences between patients who underwent rehabilitation and controls); (3) These FC recovery changes were related with the enhanced of cognitive performance. Furthermore, we explored the capacity of the neuropsychological scores before rehabilitation, to predict the FC changes in the brain network. Significant correlations were found in global indexes from the WAIS-III: Performance IQ (PIQ) and Perceptual Organization index (POI) (i.e., Picture Completion, Matrix Reasoning, and Block Design).

Keywords: MEG (magnetoencephalography); cognitive performance; functional connectivity (FC); neuropsychological rehabilitation; stroke.