Objective: The present study aimed to examine the inter-hemispheric functional connectivity of the whole brain in patients with BSP during resting state.

Background: Abnormalities in brain structure and functional activity have been reported in patients with primary blepharospasm (BSP) by recent neuroimaging studies. However, little is known about the changes in functional interaction between the cerebral hemispheres in BSP.

Methods: Twenty-five patients with BSP and 28 healthy controls matched for age and sex underwent the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The functional connectivity between any pair of symmetrical inter-hemispheric voxels (i.e., functional homotopy) was measured by voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC). The relationship between the VMHC values and clinical characteristics of patients were also explored.

Results: The patients with BSP showed higher VMHC than healthy controls in the superior parietal lobule including postcentral gyrus, while lower VMHC in the precunes, thalamus and cerebellum(Figure 1). The VMHC in the superior parietal lobule was positive correlated with disease duration (r=0.475, p=0.016)(Figure 2).

Conclusions: These findings suggest impairment of inter-hemispheric coordination in BSP, and provide preliminary evidence of altered resting-state functional connectivity in BSP mainly in the thalamus-cortical circuitry and cerebellum.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/altered-inter-hemispheric-functional-coordination-in-primary-blepharospasm/