Although it has long been known that the human brain takes advantage of topographic organization, which refers to parts of the brain that make similar computations being located in close proximity to each other, scientists have struggled to understand how these brain maps change during pathology. Now, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have solved the longstanding mystery and found that it is the continuity of these maps that is disturbed and these disturbances can be quantified, giving them the potential to be used to help detect neuropsychiatric diseases.
The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine two unique patient populations: those with a spinal cord injury on just one side, which allowed them to compare disturbed and non-disturbed body sides, and patients undergoing surgery.
Using an algorithm that quantifies the continuity of the topographical "brain maps" of each patient, the researchers found that in each patient, pathological processing was defined by a discontinuity of their topographic maps.
"These findings suggest that continuity is a primary principle in brain computation, but in pathological states the brain may give up on this principle in order to retrieve as much information as possible," said Shahar Arzy, who led the study, in a press release. "Moreover, this may serve as a biomarker for neurological pathologies that we are now investigating."
The researchers are continuing to fine-tune their experimental findings in order to improve patient diagnosis and hope to extend their findings to various other kinds of brain processes such as vision and memory.
"Our main interests involve conditions including epilepsy, neurodegenerative diseases, conversive and dissociative disorders, amnesias, disorientation states and different cognitive disturbances and misperceptions," said Arzy. "By combining direct clinical involvement and cutting-edge computational methods we are able to reframe neuropsychiatry and, at the same time, to develop effective patient-tailored clinical tools, which fits the new digital era of computational revolution and precision medicine."
The findings were published in the Sept. 1 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
