Resting-state brain networks in neonatal hypoxic-ischemic brain damage: a functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Significance: There is an emerging need for convenient and continuous bedside monitoring of full-term newborns with hypoxic-ischemic brain damage (HIBD) to determine whether early intervention is required. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based resting-state brain network analysis, which could provide an effective evaluation method, remains to be extensively studied. Aim: Our study aims to verify the feasibility of fNIRS-based resting-state brain networks for evaluating brain function in infants with HIBD to provide a new and effective means for clinical research in neonatal HIBD. Approach: Thirteen neonates with HIBD were scanned using fNIRS in the resting state. The brain network properties were explored to attempt to extract effective features as recognition indicators.

Results

Compared with healthy controls, newborns with HIBD showed decreased brain functional connectivity. Specifically, there were severe losses of long-range functional connectivity of the contralateral parietal-temporal lobe, contralateral parietal-frontal lobe, and contralateral parietal lobe. The node degree showed a widespread decrease in the left frontal middle gyrus, left superior frontal gyrus dorsal, and right central posterior gyrus. However, newborns with HIBD showed a significantly higher local network efficiency (* p < 0.05 ). Subsequently, network indicators based on small-worldness, local efficiency, modularity, and normalized clustering coefficient were extracted for HIBD identification with the accuracy observed as 79.17%.

Conclusions

Our findings indicate that fNIRS-based resting-state brain network analysis could support early HIBD diagnosis.