Cognitive functioning in patients with low-grade glioma: effects of hemispheric tumor location and surgical procedure

Factor Structure and Validity of Composite Scores Resulting From a Computerized Cognitive Test Battery in Healthy Adults and Patients With Primary Brain Tumors

Computerized neuropsychological test batteries (CNTs), such as Central Nervous System Vital Signs (CNS VS), are increasingly used for measuring cognitive functioning, but empirical evidence of how they measure cognition is scarce. We investigated the factor structure of CNS VS using exploratory factor analyses four samples: healthy adults (n = 169), patients with meningioma (392), low-grade glioma (99), and high-grade glioma (247). We tested model fit and investigated measurement invariance. Differences in factor interpretation existed between healthy participants and patients. Factor structures among patient groups were approximately the same but differed in non-zero loadings. Overall, factor structures largely did not support the "clinical domains" provided by CNS VS for clinical interpretation. Confirmatory models did not have a good fit, and measurement invariance could not be established. Our results indicate that (weighted) sum scores of CNS VS results may lack validity. We recommend researchers and clinicians to use scores on individual test measures.

Predictors of cognition after glioma surgery: connectotomy, structure-function phenotype, plasticity

Determining preoperatively the maximal extent of resection that would preserve cognitive functions is the core challenge of brain tumour surgery. Over the past decade, the methodological framework to achieve this goal has been thoroughly renewed: the population-level topographically-focused voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping has been progressively overshadowed by machine learning (ML) algorithmics, in which the problem is framed as predicting cognitive outcomes in a patient-specific manner from a typically large set of variables. However, the choice of these predictors is of utmost importance, as they should be both informative and parsimonious. In this perspective, we first introduce the concept of connectotomy: instead of parameterizing resection topography through the status (intact/resected) of a huge number of voxels (or parcels) paving the whole brain in the Cartesian 3D-space, the connectotomy models the resection in the connectivity space, by computing a handful number of networks disconnection indices, measuring how the structural connectivity sustaining each network of interest was hit by the resection. This connectivity-informed reduction of dimensionality is a necessary step for efficiently implementing ML tools, given the relatively small number of patient-examples in available training datasets. We further argue that two other major sources of interindividual variability must be considered to improve the accuracy with which outcomes are predicted: the underlying structure-function phenotype and neuroplasticity, for which we provide an in-depth review and propose new ways of determining relevant predictors. We finally discuss the benefits of our approach for precision surgery of glioma.

Clusters of resilience and vulnerability: executive functioning, coping and mental distress in patients with diffuse low-grade glioma

PURPOSE

Diffuse low-grade gliomas (dLGG) often have a frontal location, which may negatively affect patients' executive functions (EF). Being diagnosed with dLGG and having to undergo intensive treatment can be emotionally stressful. The ability to cope with this stress in an adaptive, active and flexible way may be hampered by impaired EF. Consequently, patients may suffer from increased mental distress. The aim of the present study was to explore profiles of EF, coping and mental distress and identify characteristics of each profile.

METHODS

151 patients with dLGG were included. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to explore profiles. Additional demographical, tumor and radiological characteristics were included.

RESULTS

Four clusters were found: 1) overall good functioning (25% of patients); 2) poor executive functioning, good psychosocial functioning (32%); 3) good executive functioning, poor psychosocial functioning (18%) and; 4) overall poor functioning (25%). Characteristics of the different clusters were lower educational level and more (micro)vascular brain damage (cluster 2), a younger age (cluster 3), and a larger tumor volume (cluster 4). EF was not a distinctive factor for coping, nor was it for mental distress. Maladaptive coping, however, did distinguish clusters with higher mental distress (cluster 3 and 4) from clusters with lower levels of mental distress (cluster 1 and 2).

CONCLUSION

Four distinctive clusters with different levels of functioning and characteristics were identified. EF impairments did not hinder the use of active coping strategies. Moreover, maladaptive coping, but not EF impairment, was related to increased mental distress in patients with dLGG.

Cognitive complaints in patients with untreated obstructive sleep apnea versus patients with neurological and respiratory diseases: prevalence, severity and risk factors

PURPOSE

Little is known about cognitive complaints (self-reported problems in cognitive functioning) in patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). We compared the prevalence and severity of cognitive complaints in patients with untreated OSA to patients with neurological and respiratory diseases. We also studied risk factors for cognitive complaints across these diseases, including OSA.

METHODS

We used a convenience sample to compare untreated OSA patients (N = 86) to patients with stroke (N = 166), primary brain tumor (N = 197) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, N = 204) on cognitive complaints (Cognitive Failure Questionnaire, CFQ), anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, HADS) and cognitive impairments using neuropsychological tests. We combined all patient groups (OSA, stroke, brain tumor and COPD) and studied potential risk factors (demographic variables, anxiety, depression and cognitive impairments) for cognitive complaints across all patient groups using regression analysis.

RESULTS

The prevalence of cognitive complaints was higher in OSA patients and complaints of forgetfulness and distractibility were more severe compared to stroke and primary brain tumor patients, but similar to or lower than COPD patients. Regression analysis for the combined sample of all patient groups showed that cognitive complaints were most strongly associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression.

CONCLUSION

A high rate of OSA reported clinically significant cognitive complaints, comparable to other respiratory and neurological patients. Symptoms of anxiety and depression are important risk factors for cognitive complaints in patients with various neurological and respiratory diseases. Future studies should examine the relation between anxiety, depression and cognitive complaints in patients with OSA.

Predicting Cognitive Functioning for Patients with a High-Grade Glioma: Evaluating Different Representations of Tumor Location in a Common Space

Cognitive functioning is increasingly considered when making treatment decisions for patients with a brain tumor in view of a personalized onco-functional balance. Ideally, one can predict cognitive functioning of individual patients to make treatment decisions considering this balance. To make accurate predictions, an informative representation of tumor location is pivotal, yet comparisons of representations are lacking. Therefore, this study compares brain atlases and principal component analysis (PCA) to represent voxel-wise tumor location. Pre-operative cognitive functioning was predicted for 246 patients with a high-grade glioma across eight cognitive tests while using different representations of voxel-wise tumor location as predictors. Voxel-wise tumor location was represented using 13 different frequently-used population average atlases, 13 randomly generated atlases, and 13 representations based on PCA. ElasticNet predictions were compared between representations and against a model solely using tumor volume. Preoperative cognitive functioning could only partly be predicted from tumor location. Performances of different representations were largely similar. Population average atlases did not result in better predictions compared to random atlases. PCA-based representation did not clearly outperform other representations, although summary metrics indicated that PCA-based representations performed somewhat better in our sample. Representations with more regions or components resulted in less accurate predictions. Population average atlases possibly cannot distinguish between functionally distinct areas when applied to patients with a glioma. This stresses the need to develop and validate methods for individual parcellations in the presence of lesions. Future studies may test if the observed small advantage of PCA-based representations generalizes to other data.

Discernible interindividual patterns of global efficiency decline during theoretical brain surgery

The concept of functional localization within the brain and the associated risk of resecting these areas during removal of infiltrating tumors, such as diffuse gliomas, are well established in neurosurgery. Global efficiency (GE) is a graph theory concept that can be used to simulate connectome disruption following tumor resection. Structural connectivity graphs were created from diffusion tractography obtained from the brains of 80 healthy adults. These graphs were then used to simulate parcellation resection in every gross anatomical region of the cerebrum by identifying every possible combination of adjacent nodes in a graph and then measuring the drop in GE following nodal deletion. Progressive removal of brain parcellations led to patterns of GE decline that were reasonably predictable but had inter-subject differences. Additionally, as expected, there were deletion of some nodes that were worse than others. However, in each lobe examined in every subject, some deletion combinations were worse for GE than removing a greater number of nodes in a different region of the brain. Among certain patients, patterns of common nodes which exhibited worst GE upon removal were identified as "connectotypes". Given some evidence in the literature linking GE to certain aspects of neuro-cognitive abilities, investigating these connectotypes could potentially mitigate the impact of brain surgery on cognition.

Perioperative Neurocognitive Function in Glioma Surgery

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

This review provides a concise overview of the recent literature regarding preoperative and postoperative neurocognitive functioning (NCF) in patients with glioma. Brief discussion also covers contemporary intraoperative brain mapping work, with a focus on potential influence of mapping upon NCF outcomes following awake surgery.

RECENT FINDINGS

Most patients with glioma exhibit preoperative NCF impairment, with severity varying by germ line and tumoral genetics, tumor grade, and lesion location, among other characteristics. Literature regarding postoperative NCF changes is mixed, though numerous studies indicate a majority of patients exhibit immediate and short-term worsening. This is often followed by recovery over several months; however, a substantial portion of patients harbor persisting declines. Decline appears related to surgically-induced structural and functional brain alterations, both local and distal to the tumor and resection cavity. Importantly, NCF decline may be mitigated to some extent by intraoperative brain mapping, including mapping of both language-mediated and nonverbal functions. Research regarding perioperative NCF in patients with glioma has flourished over recent years. While this has increased our understanding of contributors to NCF and risk of decline associated with surgical intervention, more work is needed to better preserve NCF throughout the disease course.

Cognitive functioning in untreated glioma patients: The limited predictive value of clinical variables

BACKGROUND

Previous research identified many clinical variables that are significantly related to cognitive functioning before surgery. It is not clear whether such variables enable accurate prediction for individual patients' cognitive functioning because statistical significance does not guarantee predictive value. Previous studies did not test how well cognitive functioning can be predicted for (yet) untested patients. Furthermore, previous research is limited in that only linear or rank-based methods with small numbers of variables were used.

METHODS

We used various machine learning models to predict preoperative cognitive functioning for 340 patients with glioma across 18 outcome measures. Predictions were made using a comprehensive set of clinical variables as identified from the literature. Model performances and optimized hyperparameters were interpreted. Moreover, Shapley additive explanations were calculated to determine variable importance and explore interaction effects.

RESULTS

Best-performing models generally demonstrated above-random performance. Performance, however, was unreliable for 14 out of 18 outcome measures with predictions worse than baseline models for a substantial number of train-test splits. Best-performing models were relatively simple and used most variables for prediction while not relying strongly on any variable.

CONCLUSIONS

Preoperative cognitive functioning could not be reliably predicted across cognitive tests using the comprehensive set of clinical variables included in the current study. Our results show that a holistic view of an individual patient likely is necessary to explain differences in cognitive functioning. Moreover, they emphasize the need to collect larger cross-center and multimodal data sets.

Emotion recognition in relation to tumor characteristics in patients with low-grade glioma

BACKGROUND

Patients with low-grade gliomas (LGG) treated with surgery, generally function well and have a favorable prognosis. However, LGG can affect neurocognitive functioning. To date, little is known about social cognition (SC) in these patients, although impaired SC is related to social-behavioral problems and poor societal participation. Frontal brain areas are important for SC and LGG frequently have a frontal location. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate whether emotion recognition, a key component of SC, was impaired, and related to general cognition, tumor location, laterality, tumor volume, and histopathological characteristics in patients with LGG, postsurgery, and before start of adjuvant therapy.

METHODS

A total of 121 patients with LGG were matched with 169 healthy controls (HC). Tumor location [including (frontal) subregions; insula, anterior cingulate cortex, lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC), orbitofrontal-ventromedial PFC] and tumor volume were determined on MRI scans. Emotion recognition was measured with the Ekman 60 faces test of the Facial Expressions of Emotion-Stimuli and Tests (FEEST).

RESULTS

Patients with LGG performed significantly lower on the FEEST than HC, with 33.1% showing impairment compared to norm data. Emotion recognition was not significantly correlated to frontal tumor location, laterality, and histopathological characteristics, and significantly but weakly with general cognition and tumor volume.

CONCLUSIONS

Emotion recognition is impaired in patients with LGG but not (strongly) related to specific tumor characteristics or general cognition. Hence, measuring SC with individual neuropsychological assessment of these patients is crucial, irrespective of tumor characteristics, to inform clinicians about possible impairments, and consequently offer appropriate care.

Dynamics in cognition and health-related quality of life in grade 2 and 3 gliomas after surgery

BACKGROUND

The focus of clinical management and research in gliomas has been on survival, but the interest in the treatment effects on cognition and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is emerging. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the dynamics in cognition after brain tumor surgery for astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas grade 2 and 3. The secondary aim was to investigate the association of postoperative changes in cognition with changes HRQoL.

METHODS

In this observational study, 48 patients operated for an astrocytoma or oligodendrogliomas, grade 2 or 3, at the Department of Neurosurgery, Uppsala, Sweden, 2016-2021, were included. Cognitive and language skills were assessed with a selected test battery and HRQoL was patient-reported as assessed with RAND-36 pre- and approximately 3 months postoperatively.

RESULTS

There was a significant postoperative decrease in attention span and verbal learning, but the patients improved in the test for visual memory. There was no change in visual attention, executive function, verbal memory, visual organization and construction, verbal fluency, and confrontation naming. The RAND-36 variables physical function, role physical, general health, vitality, and social functioning decreased significantly after surgery. Patients operated for tumor recurrence exhibited greater deterioration in attention and a greater extent of resection correlated with a less pronounced decrease in verbal memory, but there were otherwise weak associations between the dynamics in cognition and patient-, tumor-, and treatment-variables. A decline in cognitive variables was not associated with worse HRQoL.

CONCLUSIONS

Although both several cognitive and HRQoL domains deteriorated postoperatively, these changes did not correlate with each other. This highlights the complexity of cognitive and HRQoL dynamics in the early postoperative phase.

Network-level prediction of set-shifting deterioration after lower-grade glioma resection

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to predict set-shifting deterioration after resection of low-grade glioma.

METHODS

The authors retrospectively analyzed a bicentric series of 102 patients who underwent surgery for low-grade glioma. The difference between the completion times of the Trail Making Test parts B and A (TMT B-A) was evaluated preoperatively and 3-4 months after surgery. High dimensionality of the information related to the surgical cavity topography was reduced to a small set of predictors in four different ways: 1) overlap between surgical cavity and each of the 122 cortical parcels composing Yeo's 17-network parcellation of the brain; 2) Tractotron: disconnection by the cavity of the major white matter bundles; 3) overlap between the surgical cavity and each of Yeo's networks; and 4) disconets: signature of structural disconnection by the cavity of each of Yeo's networks. A random forest algorithm was implemented to predict the postoperative change in the TMT B-A z-score.

RESULTS

The last two network-based approaches yielded significant accuracies in left-out subjects (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] approximately equal to 0.8, p approximately equal to 0.001) and outperformed the two alternatives. In single tree hierarchical models, the degree of damage to Yeo corticocortical network 12 (CC 12) was a critical node: patients with damage to CC 12 higher than 7.5% (cortical overlap) or 7.2% (disconets) had much higher risk to deteriorate, establishing for the first time a causal link between damage to this network and impaired set-shifting.

CONCLUSIONS

The authors' results give strong support to the idea that network-level approaches are a powerful way to address the lesion-symptom mapping problem, enabling machine learning-powered individual outcome predictions.

Presurgical predictors of early cognitive outcome after brain tumor resection in glioma patients

Gliomas are commonly characterized by neurocognitive deficits that strongly impact patients' and caregivers' quality of life. Surgical resection is the mainstay of therapy, and it can also cause cognitive impairment. An important clinical problem is whether patients who undergo surgery will show post-surgical cognitive impairment above and beyond that present before surgery. The relevant rognostic factors are largely unknown. This study aims to quantify the cognitive impairment in glioma patients 1-week after surgery and to compare different pre-surgical information (i.e., cognitive performance, tumor volume, grading, and lesion topography) towards predicting early post-surgical cognitive outcome. We retrospectively recruited a sample of N = 47 patients affected by high-grade and low-grade glioma undergoing brain surgery for tumor resection. Cognitive performance was assessed before and immediately after (∼1 week) surgery with an extensive neurocognitive battery. Multivariate linear regression models highlighted the combination of predictors that best explained post-surgical cognitive impairment. The impact of surgery on cognitive functioning was relatively small (i.e., 85% of test scores across the whole sample indicated no decline), and pre-operative cognitive performance was the main predictor of early post-surgical cognitive outcome above and beyond information from tumor topography and volume. In fact, structural lesion information did not significantly improve the accuracy of prediction made from cognitive data before surgery. Our findings suggest that post-surgery neurocognitive deficits are only partially explained by preoperative brain damage. The present results suggest the possibility to make reliable, individualized, and clinically relevant predictions from relatively easy-to-obtain information.

Depression and Quality of Life in Patients with Gliomas: A Narrative Review

In patients with gliomas, depression is a common complication that may cause severe psychological barriers and deteriorate the patient’s quality of life (QoL). Currently, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is the most commonly used tool to diagnose depression in patients with gliomas. Female sex, unmarried status, low education level, high tumor grade, and a history of mental illness may increase the risks of depression and depressive symptoms in patients with gliomas. The QoL of patients with gliomas can be directly reduced by depression. Therefore, the evaluation and intervention of mood disorders could improve the overall QoL of patients with gliomas. Antidepressant use has become a treatment strategy for patients with gliomas and comorbid depression. This narrative review summarizes the current issues related to depression in patients with gliomas, including the prevalence, risk factors, and diagnostic criteria of depression as well as changes in QoL caused by comorbid depression and antidepressant use. The purpose of this review is to guide clinicians to assess the psychological status of patients with gliomas and to provide clinicians and oncologists with a new treatment strategy to improve the prognosis of such patients.

Segregated circuits for phonemic and semantic fluency: A novel patient-tailored disconnection study

Phonemic and semantic fluency are neuropsychological tests widely used to assess patients' language and executive abilities and are highly sensitive tests in detecting language deficits in glioma patients. However, the networks that are involved in these tasks could be distinct and suggesting either a frontal (phonemic) or temporal (semantic) involvement. 42 right-handed patients (26 male, mean age = 52.5 years, SD=±13.3) were included in this retrospective study. Patients underwent awake (54.8%) or asleep (45.2%) surgery for low-grade (16.7%) or high-grade-glioma (83.3%) in the frontal (64.3%) or temporal lobe (35.7%) of the left (50%) or right (50%) hemisphere. Pre-operative tractography was reconstructed for each patient, with segmentation of the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), arcuate fasciculus (AF), uncinate fasciculus (UF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), third branch of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF-III), frontal aslant tract (FAT), and cortico-spinal tract (CST). Post-operative percentage of damage and disconnection of each tract, based on the patients' surgical cavities, were correlated with verbal fluencies scores at one week and one month after surgery. Analyses of differences between fluency scores at these timepoints (before surgery, one week and one month after surgery) were performed; lesion-symptom mapping was used to identify the correlation between cortical areas and post-operative scores. Immediately after surgery, a transient impairment of verbal fluency was observed, that improved within a month. Left hemisphere lesions were related to a worse verbal fluency performance, being a damage to the left superior frontal or temporal gyri associated with phonemic or semantic fluency deficit, respectively. At a subcortical level, disconnection analyses revealed that fluency scores were associated to the involvement of the left FAT and the left frontal part of the IFOF for phonemic fluency, and the association was still present one month after surgery. For semantic fluency, the correlation between post-surgery performance emerged for the left AF, UF, ILF and the temporal part of the IFOF, but disappeared at the follow-up. This approach based on the patients' pre-operative tractography, allowed to trace for the first time a dissociation between white matter pathways integrity and verbal fluency after surgery for glioma resection. Our results confirm the involvement of a frontal anterior pathway for phonemic fluency and a ventral temporal pathway for semantic fluency. Finally, our longitudinal results suggest that the frontal executive pathway requires a longer interval to recover compared to the semantic one.

Influences on cognitive outcomes in adult patients with gliomas: A systematic review

People with brain tumors, including those previously treated, are commonly affected by a range of neurocognitive impairments involving executive function, memory, attention, and social/emotional functioning. Several factors are postulated to underlie this relationship, but evidence relating to many of these factors is conflicting and does not fully explain the variation in cognitive outcomes seen in the literature and in clinical practice. To address this, we performed a systematic literature review to identify and describe the range of factors that can influence cognitive outcomes in adult patients with gliomas. A literature search was performed of Ovid MEDLINE, PsychINFO, and PsycTESTS from commencement until September 2021. Of 9,998 articles identified through the search strategy, and an additional 39 articles identified through other sources, 142 were included in our review. The results confirmed that multiple factors influence cognitive outcomes in patients with gliomas. The effects of tumor characteristics (including location) and treatments administered are some of the most studied variables but the evidence for these is conflicting, which may be the result of methodological and study population differences. Tumor location and laterality overall appear to influence cognitive outcomes, and detection of such an effect is contingent upon administration of appropriate cognitive tests. Surgery appears to have an overall initial deleterious effect on cognition with a recovery in most cases over several months. A large body of evidence supports the adverse effects of radiotherapy on cognition, but the role of chemotherapy is less clear. To contrast, baseline cognitive status appears to be a consistent factor that influences cognitive outcomes, with worse baseline cognition at diagnosis/pre-treatment correlated with worse long-term outcomes. Similarly, much evidence indicates that anti-epileptic drugs have a negative effect on cognition and genetics also appear to have a role. Evidence regarding the effect of age on cognitive outcomes in glioma patients is conflicting, and there is insufficient evidence for gender and fatigue. Cognitive reserve, brain reserve, socioeconomic status, and several other variables discussed in this review, and their influence on cognition and recovery, have not been well-studied in the context of gliomas and are areas for focus in future research.

Systematic Review Registration

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier CRD42017072976.

Group-level stability but individual variability of neurocognitive status after awake resections of right frontal IDH-mutated glioma

Awake surgery for low-grade gliomas is currently considered the best procedure to improve the extent of resection and guarantee a "worth living life" for patients, meaning avoiding not only motor but also cognitive deficits. However, tumors located in the right hemisphere, especially in the right frontal lobe, are still rarely operated on in awake condition; one of the reasons possibly being that there is little information in the literature describing the rates and nature of long-lasting neuropsychological deficits following resection of right frontal glioma. To investigate long-term cognitive deficits after awake surgery in right frontal IDH-mutated glioma. We retrospectively analyzed a consecutive series of awake surgical resections between 2012 and 2020 for right frontal IDH-mutated glioma. We studied the patients' subjective complaints and objective neuropsychological evaluations, both before and after surgery. Our results were then put in perspective with the literature. Twenty surgical cases (including 5 cases of redo surgery) in eighteen patients (medium age: 42.5 [range 26-58]) were included in the study. The median preoperative volume was 37 cc; WHO grading was II, III and IV in 70%, 20%, and 10% of cases, respectively. Preoperatively, few patients had related subjective cognitive or behavioral impairment, while evaluations revealed mild deficits in 45% of cases, most often concerning executive functions, attention, working memory and speed processing. Immediate postoperative evaluations showed severe deficits of executive functions in 75% of cases but also attentional deficits (65%), spatial neglect (60%) and behavioral disturbances (apathy, aprosodia/amimia, emotional sensitivity, anosognosia). Four months after surgery, although psychometric z-scores were unchanged at the group level, individual evaluations showed a slight decrease of performance in 9/20 cases for at least one of the following domains: executive functions, speed processing, attention, semantic cognition, social cognition. Our results are generally consistent with those of the literature, confirming that the right frontal lobe is a highly eloquent area and suggesting the importance of operating these patients in awake conditions.

Should Neurosurgeons Try to Preserve Non-Traditional Brain Networks? A Systematic Review of the Neuroscientific Evidence

The importance of large-scale brain networks in higher-order human functioning is well established in neuroscience, but has yet to deeply penetrate neurosurgical thinking due to concerns of clinical relevance. Here, we conducted the first systematic review examining the clinical importance of non-traditional, large-scale brain networks, including the default mode (DMN), central executive (CEN), salience (SN), dorsal attention (DAN), and ventral attention (VAN) networks. Studies which reported evidence of neurologic, cognitive, or emotional deficits in relation to damage or dysfunction in these networks were included. We screened 22,697 articles on PubMed, and 551 full-text articles were included and examined. Cognitive deficits were the most common symptom of network disturbances in varying amounts (36–56%), most frequently related to disruption of the DMN (n = 213) or some combination of DMN, CEN, and SN networks (n = 182). An increased proportion of motor symptoms was seen with CEN disruption (12%), and emotional (35%) or language/speech deficits (24%) with SN disruption. Disruption of the attention networks (VAN/DAN) with each other or the other networks mostly led to cognitive deficits (56%). A large body of evidence is available demonstrating the clinical importance of non-traditional, large-scale brain networks and suggests the need to preserve these networks is relevant for neurosurgical patients.

Connectivity-based parcellation of normal and anatomically distorted human cerebral cortex

For over a century, neuroscientists have been working toward parcellating the human cortex into distinct neurobiological regions. Modern technologies offer many parcellation methods for healthy cortices acquired through magnetic resonance imaging. However, these methods are suboptimal for personalized neurosurgical application given that pathology and resection distort the cerebrum. We sought to overcome this problem by developing a novel connectivity‐based parcellation approach that can be applied at the single‐subject level. Utilizing normative diffusion data, we first developed a machine‐learning (ML) classifier to learn the typical structural connectivity patterns of healthy subjects. Specifically, the Glasser HCP atlas was utilized as a prior to calculate the streamline connectivity between each voxel and each parcel of the atlas. Using the resultant feature vector, we determined the parcel identity of each voxel in neurosurgical patients (n = 40) and thereby iteratively adjusted the prior. This approach enabled us to create patient‐specific maps independent of brain shape and pathological distortion. The supervised ML classifier re‐parcellated an average of 2.65% of cortical voxels across a healthy dataset (n = 178) and an average of 5.5% in neurosurgical patients. Our patient dataset consisted of subjects with supratentorial infiltrating gliomas operated on by the senior author who then assessed the validity and practical utility of the re‐parcellated diffusion data. We demonstrate a rapid and effective ML parcellation approach to parcellation of the human cortex during anatomical distortion. Our approach overcomes limitations of indiscriminately applying atlas‐based registration from healthy subjects by employing a voxel‐wise connectivity approach based on individual data.

Reducing the Cognitive Footprint of Brain Tumor Surgery

The surgical management of brain tumors is based on the principle that the extent of resection improves patient outcomes. Traditionally, neurosurgeons have considered that lesions in “non-eloquent” cerebrum can be more aggressively surgically managed compared to lesions in “eloquent” regions with more known functional relevance. Furthermore, advancements in multimodal imaging technologies have improved our ability to extend the rate of resection while minimizing the risk of inducing new neurologic deficits, together referred to as the “onco-functional balance.” However, despite the common utilization of invasive techniques such as cortical mapping to identify eloquent tissue responsible for language and motor functions, glioma patients continue to present post-operatively with poor cognitive morbidity in higher-order functions. Such observations are likely related to the difficulty in interpreting the highly-dimensional information these technologies present to us regarding cognition in addition to our classically poor understanding of the functional and structural neuroanatomy underlying complex higher-order cognitive functions. Furthermore, reduction of the brain into isolated cortical regions without consideration of the complex, interacting brain networks which these regions function within to subserve higher-order cognition inherently prevents our successful navigation of true eloquent and non-eloquent cerebrum. Fortunately, recent large-scale movements in the neuroscience community, such as the Human Connectome Project (HCP), have provided updated neural data detailing the many intricate macroscopic connections between cortical regions which integrate and process the information underlying complex human behavior within a brain “connectome.” Connectomic data can provide us better maps on how to understand convoluted cortical and subcortical relationships between tumor and human cerebrum such that neurosurgeons can begin to make more informed decisions during surgery to maximize the onco-functional balance. However, connectome-based neurosurgery and related applications for neurorehabilitation are relatively nascent and require further work moving forward to optimize our ability to add highly valuable connectomic data to our surgical armamentarium. In this manuscript, we review four concepts with detailed examples which will help us better understand post-operative cognitive outcomes and provide a guide for how to utilize connectomics to reduce cognitive morbidity following cerebral surgery.

The APOE ε4 allele in relation to pre- and postsurgical cognitive functioning of patients with primary brain tumors

BACKGROUND

Recent studies suggest a relationship between the APOE ε4 allele and cognitive outcome in patients treated for malignant brain tumors. Still, longitudinal investigations that include a pretreatment cognitive assessment are lacking and APOE's effects in patients with benign tumors are understudied. This study investigated presurgical cognitive performance and postsurgical change in ε4-carrying and non-carrying patients with glioma and meningioma.

METHODS

Neuropsychological test scores (CNS Vital Signs battery [seven measures], Digit Span Forward/Backward, Letter Fluency test) were obtained as part of a prospective study in which patients with meningioma and glioma underwent cognitive assessment 1 day before (T0, n = 505) and 3 (T3, n = 418) and 12 months after (T12, n = 167) surgery. APOE isoforms were identified retrospectively. ε4 carriers and non-carriers were compared with regard to pretreatment cognitive performance on the group and individual level. Changes in performances over time were compared with longitudinal mixed model analysis in the total sample and the subgroup receiving adjuvant treatment.

RESULTS

Carriers and non-carriers did not differ with regard to pretreatment performance. No significant main effect of ε4 carrier status or interaction between time (T0-T12) and carrier status was found on any of the tests in the whole sample nor in the sample receiving adjuvant treatment.

CONCLUSIONS

This study found no evidence of increased vulnerability for pretreatment cognitive dysfunction or cognitive decline within 1 year after surgery in APOE ε4-carrying meningioma and glioma patients. Investigations that include larger samples at longer-term follow-up are recommended to investigate potential late treatment effects.

Executive functional deficits during electrical stimulation of the right frontal aslant tract

Direct electrical stimulation mapping was used to map executive functions during awake surgery of a patient with a right frontal low-grade glioma. We specifically targeted the frontal aslant tract, as this pathway had been infiltrated by the tumor. The right frontal aslant tract has been implicated in executive functions in the neuroscientific literature, but is yet of unknown relevance for clinical practice. Guided by tractography, electrical stimulation of the frontal aslant tract disrupted working memory and inhibitory functions. In this report we illustrate the dilemmas that neurosurgeons face when balancing maximal tumor resection against optimal cognitive performance. In particular, we emphasize that intraoperative tasks that target cognitive functions should be carefully introduced in clinical practice to prevent clinically irrelevant responses and too early termination of the resection.

Height, weight, and cardiovascular effects of stimulants on children with brain tumors

INTRODUCTION

Children with brain tumors may develop inattention, slow processing, and hypersomnia. Stimulant medications improve these problems, but their effect on growth, heart rate, and blood pressure (BP) are inadequately explored.

PROCEDURE

We retrospectively studied children with brain tumors treated at our institution that had data available for 1 year pre and 2 years on stimulant treatment. Tumor location, gender, radiation treatment (RT), age at RT, drug type, and hormone therapy were variables of interest.

RESULTS

We identified 65 children (35 males) that fulfilled eligibility criteria. Focal RT was utilized in 58; 11 additionally had whole brain RT; and seven received no RT. Thirty were treated for hypersomnia and inattention, eight for hypersomnia alone, and rest for inattention. Modafinil was the first drug in 18 (27.7%), and methylphenidate in the others. Forty-seven (72.3%), 45 (69.2%), and 49 (75.4%) were on thyroxine, cortisone, and growth hormones, respectively. There was no difference in pre- and post-stimulant body mass index (BMI), heart rate, and BP. There was also no difference between modafinil and methylphenidate groups. Rate of height acquisition slowed on stimulants (P = .0096). Thyroxine treatment correlated with increase in BMI after stimulants (P = .04). Younger age (P = .0003) and higher prestimulant BMI (P = .0063) correlated with increased heart rate on stimulants, while higher age at RT (P =.016) correlated with elevated systolic BP on stimulants. No associations were found with height acquisition and diastolic BP.

CONCLUSION

Stimulants are well tolerated by children with brain tumors that are appropriately managed for endocrine deficiencies, but may reduce the trajectory of height attainment.