Multimodal Brain Imaging Study of Language Cognitive Function in Patients With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

【 Objective 】 To elucide the key brain network nodes and their brain mechanisms of language cognitive impairment and decline in ALS, and to reveal the neural mechanism of the association between language cognitive impairment and motor executive function in ALS, so as to provide potential early diagnostic markers and targeted therapeutic targets for language cognitive impairment in ALS.

[Design] With the help of multi-modal brain imaging methods such as resting-state functional MRI, task-state functional MRI, structural MRI and diffusion tensor imaging, this project will analyze from multiple dimensions such as brain structure, gray matter morphology, white matter fibrous brain functional activation mode and brain functional connectivity network.

In particular, combined with the brain functional activities of ALS patients in the cognitive processing task of language understanding and language use, the brain network damage of ALS patients in motor and executive function was compared, and the neural activities and network mechanism of specific changes in language cognitive processing in ALS patients were investigated. Combined with the clinical neuropsychological behavior evaluation data, To deeply understand the neural mechanism of language cognitive impairment in ALS patients.

The research will be divided into four parts, including: the brain functional network mechanism of ALS language understanding processing injury, ALS language use processing injury, ALS motor executive processing injury, ALS language cognitive injury brain structural network mechanism.

Ten patients with ALS were included in each part of the study, and 40 patients with ALS in four parts were included in the study. Multimodal magnetic resonance scanning and cognitive assessment were performed.