Recovery of an injured prefronto-caudate tract in a patient with traumatic brain injury: A diffusion tensor tractography study.

OBJECTIVES

We report on a patient with improvement of akinetic mutism (AM), who showed recovery of an injured prefronto-caudate tract following traumatic brain injury (TBI), which was demonstrated by follow-up diffusion tensor tractographies (DTTs).

CASE PRESENTATION: A 72-year-old female had suffered from head trauma resulting from falling down the stairs. She was diagnosed as subdural hematoma on the right frontal lobe and subarachnoid haemorrhage. At 5 weeks after head trauma, when starting rehabilitation, she showed no spontaneous movement or speech. She participated in a comprehensive rehabilitative management programme, including movement therapy and dopaminergic drugs, for improvement of AM. During 5 week's intensive rehabilitation, she showed gradual improvement of AM: she became able to perform some daily activities by herself including eating, dressing and walking.

RESULTS

On 5-week DTT, the neural connectivity of the caudate nucleus (CN) to the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC; Broadmann area [BA]: 10 and 12) and the orbitofrontal cortex (BA: 11 and 13) was decreased in both hemispheres; in contrast, the neural connectivity of the CN to the medial PFC was increased on the left side on 10-week and 6-month DTT.

CONCLUSIONS

Recovery of an injured prefronto-caudate tract concurrent with the improvement of AM was demonstrated in a patient with TBI, using follow-up DTTs.