Abstracts

Rationale: To study the topographical alteration in functional connectivity following physical activity in patients with benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (BECTS). Methods: Six patients diagnosed with BECTS were participated in a structured (5-weeks) supervised by the experts followed by home-based (30 weeks) physical activities. We visually inspected the resting-state EEG recordings of those patients examined before and after the completion of exercise program and selected 35 spikes- and artifacts-free 3-second epochs. Functional connectivity was then calculated at alpha band for each subject and each condition within 36 region-of-interests constituting five resting state networks [1] using phase locking value implemented in Brainstorm software. We also evaluated the distribution of nodal degrees in each node for each condition. Results: Two nodes namely left inferior temporal (liTmp) and right superior parietal (rSP) showed increased number of functional connectivity across various cortical regions following exercise as shown in Figure 1. Notably, the connectivity at pre-state were retained in the post-state as well. The increased functional connectivity resulted significantly increased nodal degrees of the respective nodes as shown in Figure 2. Conclusions: The increased nodal degree of liTmp thereby showing the bilateral connectivity across temporal and parietal regions could be an indication of improved visual perception [2]. Similarly, the increased nodal degree of rSP would reflect improved working-memory manipulation following exercise in patients with BECTS [3]. Funding: Korean Research Foundation NRF-2017R1A2B4006903