Alteration of Resting-State Brain Sensorimotor Connectivity following Spinal Cord Injury: A Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Motor and sensory deficits after spinal cord injury (SCI) result in functional reorganization of the sensorimotor network. While several task-evoked functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies demonstrated functional alteration of the sensorimotor network in SCI, there has been no study of the possible alteration of resting-state functional connectivity using resting-state fMRI. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes of brain functional connectivity in the sensorimotor cortex of patients with SCI. We evaluated the functional connectivity scores between brain areas within the sensorimotor network in 18 patients with SCI and 18 controls. Our findings demonstrated that, compared with control subjects, patients with SCI showed increased functional connectivity between primary motor cortex and other motor areas, such as the supplementary motor area and basal ganglia. However, decreased functional connectivity between primary somatosensory cortex and secondary somatosensory cortex also was found in patients with SCI, compared with controls. These findings therefore demonstrated alteration of the resting-state sensorimotor network in patients with SCI, who showed increased connectivity between motor components, and decreased connectivity between sensory components, within the sensorimotor network, suggesting that motor components within the motor network increased in functional connectivity in order to compensate for motor deficits, whereas the sensory network did not show any such increases or compensation for sensory deficits.