Decision letter for "Alterations in the Whole Brain Network Organization after Prenatal Ethanol Exposure"

AbstractA wide variety of mental disorders have been associated with resting-state functional network alterations, which are thought to contribute to the cognitive changes underlying mental illness. These observations have seemed to support various theories postulating large-scale disruptions of brain systems in mental illness. However, existing approaches isolate differences in network organization without putting those differences in broad, whole-brain perspective. Using a graph distance measure – connectome-wide correlation – we found that whole-brain resting-state functional network organization in humans is highly similar across a variety of mental diseases and healthy controls. This similarity was observed across autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia. Nonetheless, subtle differences in network graph distance were predictive of diagnosis, suggesting that while functional connectomes differ little across health and disease those differences are informative. Such small network alterations may reflect the fact that most psychiatric patients maintain overall cognitive abilities similar to those of healthy individuals (relative to, e.g., the most severe schizophrenia cases), such that whole-brain functional network organization is expected to differ only subtly even for mental diseases with devastating effects on everyday life. These results suggest a need to reevaluate neurocognitive theories of mental illness, with a role for subtle functional brain network changes in the production of an array of mental diseases.

Download Full-text

A Whole-Brain and Cross-Diagnostic Perspective on Functional Brain Network Dysfunction

Cerebral Cortex ◽

10.1093/cercor/bhaa242 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 547-561

Author(s):

Marjolein Spronk ◽

Brian P Keane ◽

Takuya Ito ◽

Kaustubh Kulkarni ◽

Jie Lisa Ji ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mental Illness ◽

Mental Disorders ◽

Resting State ◽

Brain Network ◽

Graph Distance ◽

Network Organization ◽

Whole Brain ◽

Functional Brain ◽

Functional Brain Network ◽

Mental Diseases

Abstract A wide variety of mental disorders have been associated with resting-state functional network alterations, which are thought to contribute to the cognitive changes underlying mental illness. These observations appear to support theories postulating large-scale disruptions of brain systems in mental illness. However, existing approaches isolate differences in network organization without putting those differences in a broad, whole-brain perspective. Using a graph distance approach—connectome-wide similarity—we found that whole-brain resting-state functional network organization is highly similar across groups of individuals with and without a variety of mental diseases. This similarity was observed across autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and schizophrenia. Nonetheless, subtle differences in network graph distance were predictive of diagnosis, suggesting that while functional connectomes differ little across health and disease, those differences are informative. These results suggest a need to reevaluate neurocognitive theories of mental illness, with a role for subtle functional brain network changes in the production of an array of mental diseases. Such small network alterations suggest the possibility that small, well-targeted alterations to brain network organization may provide meaningful improvements for a variety of mental disorders.

Download Full-text

Bridging global and local topology in whole-brain networks using the network statistic jackknife

Network Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/netn_a_00109 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 70-88 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Teague R. Henry ◽

Kelly A. Duffy ◽

Marc D. Rudolph ◽

Mary Beth Nebel ◽

Stewart H. Mostofsky ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Network Analysis ◽

Network Structure ◽

R Package ◽

Brain Network ◽

Global Network ◽

Local Network ◽

Network Organization ◽

Whole Brain ◽

Global Efficiency ◽

Global Topology

Whole-brain network analysis is commonly used to investigate the topology of the brain using a variety of neuroimaging modalities. This approach is notable for its applicability to a large number of domains, such as understanding how brain network organization relates to cognition and behavior and examining disrupted brain network organization in disease. A benefit to this approach is the ability to summarize overall brain network organization with a single metric (e.g., global efficiency). However, important local differences in network structure might exist without any corresponding observable differences in global topology, making a whole-brain analysis strategy unlikely to detect relevant local findings. Conversely, using local network metrics can identify local differences, but are not directly informative of differences in global topology. Here, we propose the network statistic (NS) jackknife framework, a simulated lesioning method that combines the utility of global network analysis strategies with the ability to detect relevant local differences in network structure. We evaluate the NS jackknife framework with a simulation study and an empirical example comparing global efficiency in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and typically developing (TD) children. The NS jackknife framework has been implemented in a public, open-source R package, netjack, available at https://cran.r-project.org/package=netjack .

Download Full-text

Effects of Prenatal Ethanol Exposure on Voltage-Dependent Calcium Entry into Neonatal Whole Brain-Dissociated Neurons

Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research ◽

10.1111/j.1530-0277.1996.tb05272.x ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 20 (5) ◽

pp. 921-928 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Young-Hee Lee ◽

Karen Spuhler-Phillips ◽

Patrick K. Randall ◽

Steven W. Leslie

Keyword(s):

Ethanol Exposure ◽

Calcium Entry ◽

Prenatal Ethanol Exposure ◽

Whole Brain ◽

Voltage Dependent

Download Full-text