Frontoparietal white matter supports information transfer between brain areas involved in complex haptic tasks such as somatosensory discrimination. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the relationship between microstructural integrity of frontoparietal network white matter and haptic performance in @entity1 with @entity64 and to compare frontoparietal network integrity in @entity1 with @entity64 and age matched control @entity1 . Nineteen individuals with @entity64 and 16 controls participated. Haptic performance was quantified using the Hand Active Sensation Test (HASTe), an 18-item match-to-sample test of weight and texture discrimination. Three tesla MRI was used to obtain diffusion-weighted and high-resolution anatomical images of the whole brain. Probabilistic tractography was used to define 10 frontoparietal tracts total; Four intrahemispheric tracts measured bilaterally 1) thalamus to primary somatosensory cortex (T-S1), 2) thalamus to primary motor cortex (T-M1), 3) primary to secondary somatosensory cortex (S1 to SII) and 4) primary somatosensory cortex to middle frontal gyrus (S1 to MFG) and, 2 interhemispheric tracts; S1-S1 and precuneus interhemispheric. A control tract outside the network, the cuneus interhemispheric tract, was also examined. The diffusion metrics fractional anisotropy (FA), @entity1893 ( @entity1893 ), axial (AD) and radial diffusivity (RD) were quantified for each tract. Diminished FA and elevated @entity1893 values are associated with poorer white matter integrity in @entity64 . Nine of 10 tracts quantified in the frontoparietal network had diminished structural integrity poststroke compared to the controls. The precuneus interhemispheric tract was not significantly different between groups. Principle component analysis across all frontoparietal white matter tract @entity1893 values indicated a single factor explained 47% and 57% of the variance in tract @entity1893 in @entity64 and control groups respectively. Age strongly correlated with the shared variance across tracts in the control, but not in the poststroke @entity1 . A moderate to good relationship was found between ipsilesional T-M1 @entity1893 and affected hand HASTe score (r  =  -  0.62, p  =  0.006) and less affected hand HASTe score (r  =  -  0.53, p  =  0.022). Regression analysis revealed approximately 90% of the variance in affected hand HASTe score was predicted by the white matter integrity in the frontoparietal network (as indexed by @entity1893 ) in poststroke @entity1 while 87% of the variance in HASTe score was predicted in control @entity1 . This study demonstrates the importance of frontoparietal white matter in mediating haptic performance and specifically identifies that T-M1 and precuneus interhemispheric tracts may be appropriate targets for piloting rehabilitation interventions, such as noninvasive brain stimulation, when the goal is to improve poststroke haptic performance.

Frontoparietal white matter integrity predicts haptic performance in XXXX .

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['participants', 'persons'] @entity1893 :: ('MESH:D008228', 'Disease') :: ['mean diffusivity', 'MD'] @entity64 :: ('MESH:D020521', 'Disease') :: ['stroke', 'chronic stroke']
@entity64 :: (MESH:D020521,Disease) :: ['chronic stroke']
