Hormone Levels Are Related to Altered Functional Connectivity in Prolactinomas

ABSTRACTBackground and ObjectiveProlactinomas may cause drastic hormone fluctuations throughout the body. It is not fully understood how endogenous hormone disorders such as prolactinomas reshape the patient’s brain. By employing the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging technique, we aimed to investigate the whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) and its relationship with hormone levels in patients with prolactinomas.MethodsUsing whole-brain and seed-based functional connectivity analyses, we compared FC metrics between 33 prolactinoma patients and 31 healthy controls matched with age, sex, and handedness. Then we performed partial correlation analysis to examine the relationship between FC metrics and hormone levels.ResultsCompared to healthy controls, we found that prolactinoma patients showed significantly increased thalamocortical (visual cortex) and cerebellar-cerebral connectivity. In addition, endogenous hormone levels were positively correlated with the increased FC, and the hormone-FC relationships showed sex difference in prolactinoma patients.ConclusionsOur findings are the first to reveal the altered FC patterns and sex-dependent hormone-FC relationships in prolactinoma patients, indicating the important role of hormone levels in the neural mechanism of brain reorganization and hyperactive intrinsic connections in prolactinomas.

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Abnormal Intrinsic Functional Interactions Within Pain Network in Cervical Discogenic Pain

Frontiers in Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnins.2021.671280 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Hong Zhang ◽

Dongqin Xia ◽

Xiaoping Wu ◽

Run Liu ◽

Hongsheng Liu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Cervical Disc ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Neural Basis ◽

Discogenic Pain ◽

Whole Brain ◽

Functional Interactions ◽

Posterior Insula ◽

Clinical Measures ◽

Brain Functional Connectivity

Cervical discogenic pain (CDP) is mainly induced by cervical disc degeneration. However, how CDP modulates the functional interactions within the pain network remains unclear. In the current study, we studied the changed resting-state functional connectivities of pain network with 40 CDP patients and 40 age-, gender-matched healthy controls. We first defined the pain network with the seeds of the posterior insula (PI). Then, whole brain and seed-to-target functional connectivity analyses were performed to identify the differences in functional connectivity between CDP and healthy controls. Finally, correlation analyses were applied to reveal the associations between functional connectivities and clinical measures. Whole-brain functional connectivity analyses of PI identified increased functional connectivity between PI and thalamus (THA) and decreased functional connectivity between PI and middle cingulate cortex (MCC) in CDP patients. Functional connectivity analyses within the pain network further revealed increased functional connectivities between bilateral PI and bilateral THA, and decreased functional connectivities between left PI and MCC, between left postcentral gyrus (PoCG) and MCC in CDP patients. Moreover, we found that the functional connectivities between right PI and left THA, between left PoCG and MCC were negatively and positively correlated with the visual analog scale, respectively. Our findings provide direct evidence of how CDP modulates the pain network, which may facilitate understanding of the neural basis of CDP.

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Abnormal Whole Brain Functional Connectivity Pattern Homogeneity and Couplings in Migraine Without Aura

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnhum.2020.619839 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 14 ◽

Author(s):

Yingxia Zhang ◽

Hong Chen ◽

Min Zeng ◽

Junwei He ◽

Guiqiang Qi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Resting State ◽

Migraine Without Aura ◽

Cingulate Cortex ◽

Connectivity Pattern ◽

Precentral Gyrus ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Functional Impairments ◽

Whole Brain ◽

Brain Functional Connectivity

Previous studies have reported abnormal amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation and regional homogeneity in patients with migraine without aura using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. However, how whole brain functional connectivity pattern homogeneity and its corresponding functional connectivity changes in patients with migraine without aura is unknown. In the current study, we employed a recently developed whole brain functional connectivity homogeneity (FcHo) method to identify the voxel-wise changes of functional connectivity patterns in 21 patients with migraine without aura and 21 gender and age matched healthy controls. Moreover, resting-state functional connectivity analysis was used to reveal the changes of corresponding functional connectivities. FcHo analyses identified significantly decreased FcHo values in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), thalamus (THA), and left anterior insula (AI) in patients with migraine without aura compared to healthy controls. Functional connectivity analyses further found decreased functional connectivities between PCC and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), between AI and anterior cingulate cortex, and between THA and left precentral gyrus (PCG). The functional connectivities between THA and PCG were negatively correlated with pain intensity. Our findings indicated that whole brain FcHo and connectivity abnormalities of these regions may be associated with functional impairments in pain processing in patients with migraine without aura.

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Individualized event structure drives individual differences in whole-brain functional connectivity

10.1101/2021.03.12.435168 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Richard F. Betzel ◽

Sarah A. Cutts ◽

Sarah Greenwell ◽

Olaf Sporns

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Developmental State ◽

High Amplitude ◽

Brain Network ◽

Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽

Whole Brain ◽

Brain Functional Connectivity ◽

Dense Sampling ◽

Insight Into

Resting-state functional connectivity is typically modeled as the correlation structure of whole-brain regional activity. It is studied widely, both to gain insight into the brain’s intrinsic organization but also to develop markers sensitive to changes in an individual’s cognitive, clinical, and developmental state. Despite this, the origins and drivers of functional connectivity, especially at the level of densely sampled individuals, remain elusive. Here, we leverage novel methodology to decompose functional connectivity into its precise framewise contributions. Using two dense sampling datasets, we investigate the origins of individualized functional connectivity, focusing specifically on the role of brain network “events” – short-lived and peaked patterns of high-amplitude cofluctuations. Here, we develop a statistical test to identify events in empirical recordings. We show that the patterns of cofluctuation expressed during events are repeated across multiple scans of the same individual and represent idiosyncratic variants of template patterns that are expressed at the group level. Lastly, we propose a simple model of functional connectivity based on event cofluctuations, demonstrating that group-averaged cofluctuations are suboptimal for explaining participant-specific connectivity. Our work complements recent studies implicating brief instants of high-amplitude cofluctuations as the primary drivers of static, whole-brain functional connectivity. Our work also extends those studies, demonstrating that cofluctuations during events are individualized, positing a dynamic basis for functional connectivity.

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Distinct contributions of obsessive and compulsive symptoms for whole-brain functional connectivity in obsessive-compulsive disorder

10.26226/morressier.5971be86d462b80290b52754 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Pedro Morgado

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ◽

Obsessive Compulsive ◽

Whole Brain ◽

Compulsive Disorder ◽

Brain Functional Connectivity

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Effect of corpus callosum agenesis on the language network in children and adolescents

Brain Structure and Function ◽

10.1007/s00429-020-02203-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Lisa Bartha-Doering ◽

Ernst Schwartz ◽

Kathrin Kollndorfer ◽

Florian Ph. S. Fischmeister ◽

Astrid Novak ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Corpus Callosum ◽

Network Connectivity ◽

Functional Language ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Language Abilities ◽

Verbal Abilities ◽

Left And Right ◽

Language Network

AbstractThe present study is interested in the role of the corpus callosum in the development of the language network. We, therefore, investigated language abilities and the language network using task-based fMRI in three cases of complete agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC), three cases of partial ACC and six controls. Although the children with complete ACC revealed impaired functions in specific language domains, no child with partial ACC showed a test score below average. As a group, ACC children performed significantly worse than healthy controls in verbal fluency and naming. Furthermore, whole-brain ROI-to-ROI connectivity analyses revealed reduced intrahemispheric and right intrahemispheric functional connectivity in ACC patients as compared to controls. In addition, stronger functional connectivity between left and right temporal areas was associated with better language abilities in the ACC group. In healthy controls, no association between language abilities and connectivity was found. Our results show that ACC is associated not only with less interhemispheric, but also with less right intrahemispheric language network connectivity in line with reduced verbal abilities. The present study, thus, supports the excitatory role of the corpus callosum in functional language network connectivity and language abilities.

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