Early detection of silent brain function changes in multiple sclerosis using magnetoencephalography (MEG): Towards an imaging biomarker
Mouhamad Hammami1, Basil Memon2, Anza Memon3, Susan Bowyer3
1Oakland University, 2Novi High School, 3Henry Ford Hospital
Objective:
The objective are to identify imaging biomarkers that differentiate MS patient from normal control subjects using MEG.
Background:
MEG is a noninvasive functional brain imaging technique that measures the magnetic brain waves arising from neuronal activity during rest or a cognitive task. MEG may help detect functional changes or abnormalities in MS patients early in the disease course.
Design/Methods:
In this single-center prospective pilot study, the resting state MEG data from 6 patients with MS were compared to 6 control subjects. MEG data were filtered into 4 different frequency bands: theta 4-7Hz, alpha 8-13HZ, beta 14-30Hz, and gamma 30-85 Hz. Network brain activity for each frequency band was mapped for connectivity strength across 27 regions in each hemisphere, resulting in 1431 pairings in the brain. A t-test was conducted to assess group differences in average coherence values for each pair of brain regions (N= 1,431). A P-value was produced for each region pair. The false discovery rate (FDR) was used to adjust for multiple testing. Only the most statistically significant connections between the control group and the patient group were further analyzed. These were based on a p-value of less than 0.05.
Results:
During the resting state, the MS patients had more hyperexcited/coherent connected activity in the frontal to occipital regions, while the control subjects had more coherent connections in the frontal to temporal, frontal to parietal as well as the parietal to the temporal areas.
Conclusions:
MEG could detect apparent differences in active networks during rest in patients with MS compared to controls. This will have future applications to improve or tailor treatments during the early neuronal dysfunction that could lead to functional and cognitive disabilities in patients with MS. The limitation of our study is the small sample size. The complete data analysis of 10 patients will be presented at AAN 2023.