PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - C Foulon
AU  - L Cerliani
AU  - S Kinkingnéhun
AU  - R Levy
AU  - C Rosso
AU  - M Urbanski
AU  - E Volle
AU  - M Thiebaut de Schotten
TI  - Advanced lesion symptom mapping analyses and implementation as BCBtoolkit
AID  - 10.1101/133314
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 133314
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/02/133314.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/02/133314.full
AB  - Patients with brain lesions provide a unique opportunity to understand the functioning of the human mind. However, brain lesions, even when focal, have local and remote effects impacting functionally and structurally connected circuits. Here we deliver for the first time a set of complementary solutions to measure the consequences of a given lesion upon the affected circuits. Our methods were applied to 37 patients with a focal brain lesion, revealing a large set of disconnected brain regions, which significantly impacted category fluency performance. These regions corresponded to areas that are classically considered as functionally engaged in verbal fluency and categorization tasks. These areas were organized into large functional networks, including the left ventral fronto-parietal network, whose cortical thickness proportionally decreased with performance on category fluency. Hence, the methods presented here reveal the remote effects of brain lesions, provide for the identification of the affected networks, and strengthen understanding of their relationship with cognitive and behavioural measures.