Disturbed resting functional inter-hemispherical connectivity of the ventral attentional network in alpha band is associated with unilateral spatial neglect.

Abstract

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is one of the most common symptoms of right hemisphere damage; its classical symptom is that patients fail to respond to information on their left side. It has been postulated that disturbance of 2 separate attentional networks relates to the occurrence of USN. However, little is known about the underlying mechanism and neuronal substrates. In this study, we measured spontaneous neural activity by means of magnetoencephalography in 13 patients with brain damage and 5 control subjects. To study the relationship between functional connectivity at rest and severity of USN symptoms, we determined the imaginary coherence values relating to the inter-hemispherical ventral and dorsal attentional networks, as well as the clinical severity of USN using neuropsychological tests and behavioral rating scales. The present results showed that inter-hemispherical connectivity in the ventral attentional network, especially between the left and right angular gyri, detected in the alpha band is associated with the severity of USN symptoms. This may suggest that connectivity of inter-hemispherical homologous regions of the ventral attentional network in the alpha band could be one of the biomarkers of attentional network imbalance occurring in patients with USN.