Small-worldness of brain networks after brachial plexus injury: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Research on brain function after brachial plexus injury focuses on local cortical functional reorganization, and few studies have focused on brain networks after brachial plexus injury. Changes in brain networks may help understanding of brain plasticity at the global level. We hypothesized that topology of the global cerebral resting-state functional network changes after unilateral brachial plexus injury. Thus, in this cross-sectional study, we recruited eight male patients with unilateral brachial plexus injury (right handedness, mean age of 27.9 ± 5.4 years old) and eight male healthy controls (right handedness, mean age of 28.6 ± 3.2). After acquiring and preprocessing resting-state magnetic resonance imaging data, the cerebrum was divided into 90 regions and Pearson's correlation coefficient calculated between regions. These correlation matrices were then converted into a binary matrix with affixed sparsity values of 0.1–0.46. Under sparsity conditions, both groups satisfied this small-world property. The clustering coefficient was markedly lower, while average shortest path remarkably higher in patients compared with healthy controls. These findings confirm that cerebral functional networks in patients still show small-world characteristics, which are highly effective in information transmission in the brain, as well as normal controls. Alternatively, varied small-worldness suggests that capacity of information transmission and integration in different brain regions in brachial plexus injury patients is damaged.