Altered Brain White Matter Integrity in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: A TBSS Study.

Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the possible changed cerebral white matter regions in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS).

Methods: Twenty TLE patients and 22 age- and gender-matched normal controls were included in this study. Voxel-wise analyses of multiple diffusion metrics, including fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were performed with TBSS.

Results: TLE patients exhibited significantly reduced FA in widespread white matter regions including bilateral limbic circuit, corpus callosum, thalamus, internal/external capsule, temporooccipital connections, frontotemporal connections; increase of MD was exhibited significantly almost in the left hemisphere. A significant decrease in global FA integrity was shown in epilepsy subjects compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, it exhibited a significant positive correlation between the disease duration and MD of whole brain.

Conclusions: TLE is associated with widespread abnormalities in cerebral white matter tracts and these changes may have important clinical consequences.