White matter microstructure and verbal fluency

Abstract

Poor performance on verbal fluency tasks is associated with an increased risk of post-stroke cognitive impairment. Grey matter regions supporting verbal fluency have been identified via lesion-symptom mapping, but the links between verbal fluency and white matter structure remain less well described. We examined white matter correlates of semantic (Category Fluency Animals) and phonemic or lexical fluency (COWAT FAS) after stroke, accounting for stroke severity measured with the National Institutes of health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), age, sex, and level of education. White matter fibre density and cross-section measures were automatically extracted from 72 tracts, using MRtrix and TractSeg softw..