Inter-Subject Correlation Using Movie-Driven fMRI in Drug-Resistant Epilepsy
Abstract
Treating drug-resistant epilepsy with surgery requires the localization of the epileptic focus. We explored the potential for movie-driven functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to act as a sensitive, non-invasive, and cost-effective tool to identify functionally disturbed networks. We assessed neural synchronization (inter-subject correlation; ISC) between presurgical epilepsy patients (n = 18) and healthy controls (n = 24) as they watched a suspenseful movie clip in the scanner. To optimize denoising, we compared ISC values with and without an automated Independent Components Analysis-based denoising step (ICA-AROMA). We found that denoising with ICA-AROMA elicited augmented correlation values, supporting its use for denoising naturalistic fMRI data. We identified abnormal overall ISC profiles in five of 18 patients and also observed region- and patient-specific ISC abnormalities. Naturalistic fMRI should be further explored for its utility as a sensitive and reliable complement to standard epilepsy surgical planning tools, potentially leading to improved treatment and outcomes.