scholarly journals The Relationship between Glucose Metabolism, Resting-State fMRI BOLD Signal, and GABAA-Binding Potential: A Preliminary Study in Healthy Subjects and Those with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison C Nugent ◽  
Ashley Martinez ◽  
Alana D'Alfonso ◽  
Carlos A Zarate ◽  
William H Theodore

Glucose metabolism has been associated with magnitude of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal and connectivity across subjects within the default mode and dorsal attention networks. Similar correlations within subjects across the entire brain remain unexplored. [18F]-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography ([18F]-FDG PET), [11C]-flumazenil PET, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were acquired in eight healthy individuals and nine with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Regional metabolic rate of glucose (rMRGlu) was correlated with amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFFs) in the fMRI signal, global fMRI connectivity (GC), regional homogeneity (ReHo), and gamma-aminobutyric acid A—binding potential (GABAA BPND) across the brain. Partial correlations for ALFFs, GC, and ReHo with GABAA BPND were calculated, controlling for rMRGlu. In healthy subjects, significant positive correlations were observed across the brain between rMRGlu and ALFF, ReHo and GABAA BPND, and between ALFFs and GABAA BPND, controlling for rMRGlu. Brain-wide correlations between rMRGlu and ALFFs were significantly lower in TLE patients, and correlations between rMRGlu and GC were significantly greater in TLE than healthy subjects. These results indicate that the glutamatergic and GABAergic systems are coupled across the healthy human brain, and that ALFF is related to glutamate use throughout the healthy human brain. TLE may be a disorder of altered long-range connectivity in association with glutamate function.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-30
Author(s):  
Shuhada J.M ◽  
Husbani M.A.R ◽  
A I A Hamid ◽  
Muhammad

The default mode network (DMN) is involved in conscious, resting state cognition and is thought to be affected in TLE where seizures cause impairment of consciousness. The study aimed to evaluate the brain activation of the DMN regions in both temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients  and healthy subjects by using resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rsfMRI) technique. A same number of fourteen participants with age and gender matched for the healthy subjects and TLE patients were selected with the average age is 36.9 and 37.0 years old, respectively. The rsfMRI imaging protocol was executed using a 3-T Phillips Achieva MRI scanner at the Radiology Department, Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM). For healthy subjects, the brain activation cluster in bilateral superior parietal lobes (SPL),precuneus (PRE), supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and inferior parietal lobes (IPL) were found higher than TLE patients. While for TLE patients displays higher activation clusters in bilateral MFG, STG, and ANG. The result from  random effects (RFX) on  two-sample t-tests thresholded at p = 0.001 revealed that the TLE patients display significantly higher activations on the bilateral superior frontal gyrus (SFG), left SMG, left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and right IPL. However for the core-region of DMN such as  bilateral precuneus, left MFG, bilateral STG and bilateral IPL were significantly activated but the number of voxels survives are substantially smaller than other regions such as bilateral SFG. The findings suggested that TLE patients may suffer from an impairment in some DMN region, which may cause certain neuropsychological and cognitive degradation.       Keywords: resting-state fMRI, temporal lobe epilepsy, brain activation, two-sample t-tests


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1565
Author(s):  
Sayan Kahali ◽  
Marcus E Raichle ◽  
Dmitriy A Yablonskiy

While significant progress has been achieved in studying resting-state functional networks in a healthy human brain and in a wide range of clinical conditions, many questions related to their relationship to the brain’s cellular constituents remain. Here, we use quantitative Gradient-Recalled Echo (qGRE) MRI for mapping the human brain cellular composition and BOLD (blood–oxygen level-dependent) MRI to explore how the brain cellular constituents relate to resting-state functional networks. Results show that the BOLD signal-defined synchrony of connections between cellular circuits in network-defined individual functional units is mainly associated with the regional neuronal density, while the between-functional units’ connectivity strength is also influenced by the glia and synaptic components of brain tissue cellular constituents. These mechanisms lead to a rather broad distribution of resting-state functional network properties. Visual networks with the highest neuronal density (but lowest density of glial cells and synapses) exhibit the strongest coherence of the BOLD signal as well as the strongest intra-network connectivity. The Default Mode Network (DMN) is positioned near the opposite part of the spectrum with relatively low coherence of the BOLD signal but with a remarkably balanced cellular contents, enabling DMN to have a prominent role in the overall organization of the brain and hierarchy of functional networks.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sayan Kahali ◽  
Marcus E Raichle ◽  
Dmitriy A Yablonskiy

While significant progress has been achieved in studying resting state functional networks in a healthy human brain and in a wide range of clinical conditions, many questions related to their relationship to the brain's cellular constituents remain open. In this paper we use quantitative Gradient Recalled Echo (qGRE) MRI for in vivo quantitative mapping of human brain cellular composition, and BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) MRI resting state data from the Human Connectome Project to explore how the brain cellular constituents relate to resting state functional networks. Our results show that the BOLD-signal-defined synchrony of connections between cellular circuits in network-defined individual functional units is mainly associated with the regional neuronal density, while the strength of the functional connectivity between functional units is influenced not only by the neuronal but also glia and synaptic components of brain tissue cellular constituents. Data show that these cellular-functional relationships are most evident in the infra-slow frequency range (0.01-0.16 Hz) of brain activity, which is known to be linked with fluctuations of the BOLD signal. These mechanisms lead to a rather broad distribution of resting state functional network properties. We found that visual networks with the highest neuronal density (but lowest density of glial cells and synapses) exhibit the strongest coherence of BOLD signal in individual functional units, as well as the strongest intra-network connectivity. The Default Mode Network (DMN) is positioned near the opposite part of the spectrum with relatively low coherence of the BOLD signal but a remarkably balanced cellular content enabling DMN prominent role in the overall organization of the brain and the hierarchy of functional networks in health and disease.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin-Feng Wen ◽  
Xin-Wen Guo ◽  
Xiang-Yi Cao ◽  
Ji-Wu Liao ◽  
Ping Ma ◽  
...  

Abstract Background This study aims to compare the difference of the brain changes of glucose metabolism between temporal lobe epilepsy patients (TLE) with major depressive disorder and temporal TLE without major depressive disorder. Methods A total of 24 TLE patients, who met the inclusion criteria of our hospital, were enrolled in this study. They were divided into a TLE with depression group (n = 11) and a TLE without depression group (n = 13), according to the results of the HAMD-24 Scale. Two groups patients were examined using 18F-FDG PET brain imaging. Results The low metabolic regions of the TLE with depression group were mainly found in the left frontal lobe, temporal lobe and fusiform gyrus, while the high metabolic regions of the TLE with depression group were mainly located in the right frontal lobe, visual joint cortex and superior posterior cingulate cortex. Both of the TLE groups had high metabolic compensation in the non-epileptic area during the interictal period. Conclusions There is an uptake difference of 18F-FDG between TLE patients with depression and TLE patients without depression in multiple encephalic regions.


Seizure ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satsuki Watanabe ◽  
Keiko Hara ◽  
Katsuya Ohta ◽  
Hiroko Iino ◽  
Miho Miyajima ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 263310552110187
Author(s):  
Christopher D Link

Numerous studies have identified microbial sequences or epitopes in pathological and non-pathological human brain samples. It has not been resolved if these observations are artifactual, or truly represent population of the brain by microbes. Given the tempting speculation that resident microbes could play a role in the many neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases that currently lack clear etiologies, there is a strong motivation to determine the “ground truth” of microbial existence in living brains. Here I argue that the evidence for the presence of microbes in diseased brains is quite strong, but a compelling demonstration of resident microbes in the healthy human brain remains to be done. Dedicated animal models studies may be required to determine if there is indeed a “brain microbiome.”


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhongping Zhang ◽  
Dhanashree Vernekar ◽  
Wenshu Qian ◽  
Mina Kim

Abstract Background: To investigate the effect of using an Rician nonlocal means (NLM) filter on quantification of diffusion tensor (DT)- and diffusion kurtosis (DK)-derived metrics in various anatomical regions of the human brain and the spinal cord, when combined with a constrained linear least squares (CLLS) approach.Methods: Prospective brain data from 9 healthy subjects and retrospective spinal cord data from 5 healthy subjects from a 3T MRI scanner were included in the study. Prior to tensor estimation, registered diffusion weighted images were denoised by an optimized blockwise NLM filter with CLLS. Mean kurtosis (MK), radial kurtosis (RK), axial kurtosis (AK), mean diffusivity (MD), radial diffusivity (RD), axial diffusivity (AD) and fractional anisotropy (FA), were determined in anatomical structures of the brain and the spinal cord. DTI and DKI metrics, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Chi-square values were quantified in distinct anatomical regions for all subjects, with and without Rician denoising. Results: The averaged SNR significantly increased with Rician denoising by a factor of 2 while the averaged Chi-square values significantly decreased up to 61 % in the brain and up to 43% in the spinal cord after Rician NLM filtering. In the brain, the mean MK varied from 0.70 (putamen) to 1.27 (internal capsule) while AK and RK varied from 0.58 (corpus callosum) to 0.92 (cingulum) and from 0.70 (putamen) to 1.98 (corpus callosum), respectively. In the spinal cord, FA varied from 0.78 in lateral column to 0.81 in dorsal column while MD varied from 0.91 × 10−3 mm2/s (lateral) to 0.93 × 10−3 mm2/s (dorsal). RD varied from 0.34 × 10−3 mm2/s (dorsal) to 0.38 × 10−3 mm2/s (lateral) and AD varied from 1.96 × 10−3 mm2/s (lateral) to 2.11 × 10−3 mm2/s (dorsal).Conclusions: Our results show Rician denoising NLM filter incorporated with CLLS significantly increases SNR and reduces estimation errors of DT- and KT-derived metrics, providing the reliable metrics estimation with adequate SNR levels.


Antioxidants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1702
Author(s):  
Sereen Sandouka ◽  
Tawfeeq Shekh-Ahmad

Epilepsy is a chronic disease of the brain that affects over 65 million people worldwide. Acquired epilepsy is initiated by neurological insults, such as status epilepticus, which can result in the generation of ROS and induction of oxidative stress. Suppressing oxidative stress by upregulation of the transcription factor, nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) has been shown to be an effective strategy to increase endogenous antioxidant defences, including in brain diseases, and can ameliorate neuronal damage and seizure occurrence in epilepsy. Here, we aim to test the neuroprotective potential of a naturally occurring Nrf2 activator sulforaphane, in in vitro epileptiform activity model and a temporal lobe epilepsy rat model. Sulforaphane significantly decreased ROS generation during epileptiform activity, restored glutathione levels, and prevented seizure-like activity-induced neuronal cell death. When given to rats after 2 h of kainic acid-induced status epilepticus, sulforaphane significantly increased the expression of Nrf2 and related antioxidant genes, improved oxidative stress markers, and increased the total antioxidant capacity in both the plasma and hippocampus. In addition, sulforaphane significantly decreased status epilepticus-induced neuronal cell death. Our results demonstrate that Nrf2 activation following an insult to the brain exerts a neuroprotective effect by reducing neuronal death, increasing the antioxidant capacity, and thus may also modify epilepsy development.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1S) ◽  
pp. 51-55
Author(s):  
E. S. Solomatova ◽  
N. A. Shnaider ◽  
A. A. Molgachev ◽  
D. V. Dmitrenko ◽  
I. G. Strotskaya

The temporal lobe is the most epileptogenic region of the brain. 90% of patients with temporal ictal epileptomorphic EEG activity have a variable long history of seizures. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy  (MRS) may be useful in identifying an epileptogenic focus in patients  with epilepsy without apparent structural pathology at neuroimaging.Objective: to systematize the results of early studies on this issue.Materials and methods. An electronic search was carried out in two English-language (Medline, PubMed) and one Russian-language (eLIBRARY.RU) databases. The search queries found  18,019 citations, by which 12 full-text articles were selected.Results and discussion. The main criteria for the diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy by MRS is to lower the level of N-acetylaspartate (NAA), the ratio of NAA to creatinine + choline  (NAA/(Cr + Cho) in the brain region where there is neuronal death  or damage, as well as a change in the level of myo-inositol, the  elevated level of which indicates the presence of an epileptogenic  focus, while the decreased one shows the spread of pathological activity to the adjacent tissues.Conclusion. This review will contribute to a better diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy, as well as to the intravital noninvasive detection of metabolic changes in the brain long before the development of structural pathology.


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