Disruption of Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Acute Ischemic Stroke: Comparisons Between Right and Left Hemispheric Insults

Few resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) studies evaluated the impact of acute ischemic changes on cerebral functional connectivity (FC) and its relationship with functional outcomes after acute ischemic stroke (AIS), considering the side of lesions. To characterize alterations of FC of patients with AIS by analyzing 12 large-scale brain networks (NWs) with RS-fMRI. Additionally, we evaluated the impact of the side (right (RH) or left (LH) hemisphere) of insult on the disruption of brain NWs. 38 patients diagnosed with AIS (17 RH and 21 LH) who performed 3T MRI scans up to 72 h after stroke were compared to 44 healthy controls. Images were processed and analyzed with the software toolbox UF2C with SPM12. For the first level, we generated individual matrices based on the time series extraction from 70 regions of interest (ROIs) from 12 functional NWs, constructing Pearson’s cross-correlation; the second-level analysis included an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to investigate differences between groups. The statistical significance was determined with p < 0.05, after correction for multiple comparisons with false discovery rate (FDR) correction. Overall, individuals with LH insults developed poorer clinical outcomes after six months. A widespread pattern of lower FC was observed in the presence of LH insults, while a contralateral pattern of increased FC was identified in the group with RH insults. Our findings suggest that LH stroke causes a severe and widespread pattern of reduction of brain networks’ FC, presumably related to the impairment in their long-term recovery.