White matter integrity following traumatic brain injury: the association with severity of injury and cognitive functioning

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) frequently results in impairments of memory, speed of information processing, and executive functions that may persist over many years. Diffuse axonal injury is one of the key pathologies following TBI, causing cognitive impairments due to the disruption of cortical white matter pathways. The current study examined the association between injury severity, cognition, and fractional anisotropy (FA) following TBI. Two diffusion tensor imaging techniques - region-of-interest tractography and tract-based spatial statistics - were used to assess the FA of white matter tracts. This study examined the comparability of these two approaches as they relate to injury severity and cognitive performance.