Table 1. Sample demographic and clinical characteristics.
Continuous variables were presented as means ± SD. TLE, patients with TLE; HC, healthy controls; HARDI, high–angular resolution diffusion imaging; FIAS, focal impaired awareness seizure; FAS, focal aware seizure; FBTCS, focal to bilateral tonic-clonic seizure; ASM, antiseizure medication. The quality of T1w images was assessed with an image quality rating and the total intracranial volume produced with the Computational Anatomy Toolbox (CAT12). The quality of HARDI data was assessed with a neighboring correlation index (74), which quantified the similarity between low b volumes with similar gradient directions, and with the mean framewise displacement (73) as a measure of head motion. Seizure focus was classified as left temporal (LT) and right temporal (RT). Temporal pathology was diagnosed by neuroradiologists on the basis of presurgical MRI scans as normal brain MRI (NB), hippocampal sclerosis (HS), and other pathologies (other), such as tumor, focal cortical dysplasia, and encephalocele. FBTCS history was sorted as follows: none, patients who had never had any FBTCS events during their lifetime; remote, patients who had experienced FBTCS in the past, but none for 1 year or more before scanning; and current, patients who had recurrent FBTCS within 1 year before scanning (46). For continuous variables, independent t tests were conducted. For categorical variables, chi square tests were conducted. Significant differences were highlighted in bold.
| Experimental group (N) | TLE (60) | HC (50) | T/χ2 | P |
| Age (year) | 41.13 ± 14.41 | 37.98 ± 11.78 | 1.24 | 0.218 |
| Sex (male/female) | 34/26 | 26/24 | 0.24 | 0.625 |
| Handedness (right/left) | 51/9 | 42/8 | 0.02 | 0.885 |
| T1-weighted image quality | ||||
| Image quality rating | 0.858 ± 0.006 | 0.859 ± 0.006 | −1.13 | 0.260 |
| Total intracranial volume (cm3) |
1417 ± 150 | 1416 ± 143 | 0.04 | 0.969 |
| HARDI image quality | ||||
| Neighboring correlation | 0.795 ± 0.013 | 0.795 ± 0.015 | −0.31 | 0.754 |
| Mean framewise displacement | 0.375 ± 0.155 | 0.343 ± 0.132 | 1.16 | 0.251 |
| Structural network properties | ||||
| Matrix density | 0.895 ± 0.045 | 0.911 ± 0.045 | −1.79 | 0.076 |
| Matrix total weight (log10( ∙ )) | 7.078 ± 0.018 | 7.086 ± 0.014 | −2.58 | 0.011 |
| Seizure focus (LT/RT) | 38/22 | |||
| Age at epilepsy onset (year) | 25.28 ± 15.59 | |||
| Duration of epilepsy (year) | 15.85 ± 16.46 | |||
| Temporal pathology (NB/HS/ other) |
15/27/18 | |||
| Frequency of FIAS (number per month) |
9.28 ± 16.41 | |||
| FBTCS history (none/remote/ current) |
19/16/25 | |||
| Seizure type | ||||
| FIAS | 9 | |||
| FAS | 1 | |||
| FIAS/FAS | 9 | |||
| FIAS + FBTCS | 22 | |||
| FAS + FBTCS | 1 | |||
| FIAS/FAS + FBTCS | 14 | |||
| FBTCS | 4 | |||
| Number of current ASMs (1/2/3) |
27/26/7 |