Reorganized Hubs of Brain Functional Networks after Acute Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI)-associated damage to hub regions can lead to disrupted modular structures of functional brain networks and may result in widespread cognitive and behavioral deficits. The spatial layout of brain connections and modules is essential for understanding the reorganization of brain networks to trauma. We investigated the roles of hubs in inter-subnetwork information coordination and integration using participation coefficients (PCs) in 74 patients with acute mTBI and 51 matched healthy controls. In some brain networks, such as default mode network (DMN) and frontoparietal network (FPN), mild TBI patients had decreased PC levels, while this measure was saliently increased in patients in other networks, such as the visual network. The hub disruption index was defined as the gradient of a straight line fitted to scatterplots of individual mTBI in participation coefficient versus mean participation coefficient of healthy groups. There was a trend of radical reorganization of some efficient "hub" nodes in patients (kappa = -0.15), compared with controls (kappa close to 0). The PC of brain hubs can also differentiate mTBI patients from controls with an 88% accuracy, and decreased PC levels in FPN can predict patient' s worse cognitive information processing speed (r = 0.36, p < 0.002) and working memory performance (r = 0.35, p < 0.002). Reduced PC within the DMN was associated with patients' complaints of post-concussion symptoms (r = -0.35, p < 0.002). This evidence suggests a trend of spatial transition of hub profiles in acute mTBI, and graph metrics of PC measures can be used as potential diagnostic biomarkers.