Article

Little is known about neural recovery of an injured cingulum
following brain injury. We report on a patient with brain injury who showed
apparent neural recovery of an injured cingulum on follow up diffusion tensor
tractography (DTT). METHODS: A 53-year-old female patient had suffered hypoxic
ischemic brain injury for a period of approximately nine hours following
spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage and intraventricular hemorrhage, and
underwent coiling of a left ruptured aneurysm of the posterior communicating
artery. She showed severe cognitive impairment, so that she could not be
evaluated on the Mini-Mental State Examination, however, her cognition showed
improvement to 21 at five months after onset and 24 at 14 months after onset on
the Mini-Mental State Examination. RESULTS: On seven-day DTT for the fornix in
the patient, we observed a discontinuation in the left crus and thinning of the
right crus. However, on 14-month DTT, the thinned right fornical crus had
disappeared. Regarding the cingulum, on seven-day DTTs, discontinuations of both
cingulums anterior to the genu of the corpus callosum were observed. However, on
14-month follow up DTT, the right cingulum was elongated to the right basal
forebrain and no change in the discontinuation of the left cingulum was observed.
CONCLUSIONS: These changes observed on DTT in both cingulums appeared to indicate
recovery of the injured cingulum in this patient. The results of this study may
suggest a mechanism for recovery of injured cingulum following brain injury.

Langue : ANGLAIS