Altered brain network centrality in patients with trigeminal neuralgia: a resting-state fMRI study.

BACKGROUND: Neuroimaging studies revealed that trigeminal neuralgia was related to alternations in brain anatomical function and regional function. However, the functional characteristics of network organization in the whole brain is unknown.

PURPOSE: The aim of the present study was to analyze potential functional network brain-activity changes and their relationships with clinical features in patients with trigeminal neuralgia via the voxel-wise degree centrality method.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study involved a total of 28 trigeminal neuralgia patients (12 men, 16 women) and 28 healthy controls matched in sex, age, and education. Spontaneous brain activity was evaluated by degree centrality. Correlation analysis was used to examine the correlations between behavioral performance and average degree centrality values in several brain regions.

RESULTS: Compared with healthy controls, trigeminal neuralgia patients had significantly higher degree centrality values in the right lingual gyrus, right postcentral gyrus, left paracentral lobule, and bilateral inferior cerebellum. Receiver operative characteristic curve analysis of each brain region confirmed excellent accuracy of the areas under the curve. There was a positive correlation between the mean degree centrality value of the right postcentral gyrus and VAS score (r = 0.885, P < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: Trigeminal neuralgia causes abnormal brain network activity in multiple brain regions, which may be related to underlying disease mechanisms.