Fig. 2

Left: T-maps of the statistical comparison between Healthy Controls and Thalassemic patients (TDT and NTDT) showed respectively on inflated brain surfaces and on the single subject T1w anatomical image. Right: Bar plot (and standard deviation bars) of the mean perfusion values across the three groups in the clusters of significant differences. Patients had significantly lower perfusion compared to Healthy Controls in both left (L-AC) and right (R-AC) auditory cortex. By subgroup analysis, the difference persisted significant between healthy controls and TDT; perfusion values did not differ between NTDT and TDT. rCBFv: relative cerebral blood flow values in the auditory cortex; rCBFOcc: relative cerebral blood flow in the occipital cortex