Aberrant interhemispheric homotopic functional and structural connectivity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Objective Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is an idiopathic and fatal neurodegenerative disease of the human motor system. While microstructural alterations in corpus callosum (CC) have been identified as a consistent feature of ALS, studies directly examining interhemispheric neural connectivity are still lacking. To shed more light on the pathophysiology of ALS, the present study aims to examine alterations of interhemispheric structural and functional connectivity in individuals with ALS.

Methods Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and resting-state functional MRI (rfMRI) data were acquired from 38 individuals with ALS and 35 gender-matched and age-matched control subjects. Indices of interhemispheric functional and structural neural connection were derived with analyses of voxel mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) and probabilistic fibre tracking…

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