VBM analysis of T1-weighted images
CORTEX
VBM analysis was carried out 6 M after NSCs treatment to determine changes in the volume of the cerebral cortex. Owing to some patients' T1-weighted image artifacts, we only performed VBM analysis on the T1-weighted images of nine patients in the treatment group. We found that the overall brain volume of CP patients showed an increasing trend after treatment, with an increase of 1.51%, although there was no significant difference compared with baseline. Further analysis in local brain regions indicated that the gray matter related to the patient's visual, language, sensory, hand–eye coordination, and social and emotional processing significantly increased after NSCs treatment, such as superior occipital gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, left inferior occipital gyrus, right inferior occipital gyrus, fusiform gyrus, superior parietal gyrus, inferior parietal lobe, angular gyrus, and temporal pole middle temporal gyrus (Changes of gray matter volume from baseline to month 6 in the treatment group6 M: 6 months after treatment; SOG.L: Superior occipital gyrus; MOG.R: Middle occipital gyrus; IOG.L: Inferior occipital gyrus; IOG.R: Inferior occipital gyrus; FFG.R: Fusiform gyrus; SPG.R: Superior parietal gyrus; IPL.R: Inferior parietal, but supramarginal and angular gyri; ANG.R: Angular gyrus; TPOmid.L: Temporal pole: middle temporal gyrus*