Increased Amygdala and Visual Cortex Activity and Functional Connectivity towards Stimulus Novelty Is Associated with State Anxiety

Insomnia might occur as result of increased cognitive and physiological arousal caused by acute or long acting stressors and associated cognitive rumination. This might lead to alterations in brain connectivity patterns as those captured by functional connectivity fMRI analysis, leading to potential insight about primary insomnia (PI) pathophysiology as well as the impact of long-term exposure to sleep deprivation. We investigated changes of voxel-wise connectivity patterns in a sample of 17 drug-naïve PI patients and 17 age-gender matched healthy controls, as well as the relationship between brain connectivity and age of onset, illness duration, and severity. Results showed a significant increase in resting-state functional connectivity of the bilateral visual cortex in PI patients, associated with decreased connectivity between the visual cortex and bilateral temporal pole. Regression with clinical scores originally unveiled a pattern of increased local connectivity as measured by intrinsic connectivity contrast (ICC), specifically resembling the default mode network (DMN). Additionally, age of onset was found to be correlated with the connectivity of supplementary motor area (SMA), and the strength of DMN←→SMA connectivity was significantly correlated with both age of onset (R2 = 41%) and disease duration (R2 = 21%). Chronic sleep deprivation, but most importantly early insomnia onset, seems to have a significant disruptive effect over the physiological negative correlation between DMN and SMA, a well-known fMRI marker of attention performance in humans. This suggests the need for more in-depth investigations on the prevention and treatment of connectivity changes and associated cognitive and psychological deficits in PI patients.

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Partial Correlation-Based Retinotopically Organized Resting-State Functional Connectivity Within and Between Areas of the Visual Cortex Reflects More Than Cortical Distance

Brain Connectivity ◽

10.1089/brain.2014.0331 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 57-75 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Debra Ann Dawson ◽

Jack Lam ◽

Lindsay B. Lewis ◽

Felix Carbonell ◽

Janine D. Mendola ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Functional Connectivity ◽

Resting State ◽

Partial Correlation ◽

Resting State Functional Connectivity

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Stimulus novelty and emotion perception: the near absence of habituation in the visual cortex

Neuroreport ◽

10.1097/01.wnr.0000203355.88061.c6 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 17 (4) ◽

pp. 365-369 ◽

Cited By ~ 89

Author(s):

Harald T. Schupp ◽

Jessica Stockburger ◽

Maurizio Codispoti ◽

Markus Jungh??fer ◽

Almut I. Weike ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Emotion Perception ◽

Stimulus Novelty

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Dissociated mean and functional connectivity BOLD signals in visual cortex during eyes closed and fixation

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.00900.2011 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 108 (9) ◽

pp. 2363-2372 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Mark McAvoy ◽

Linda Larson-Prior ◽

Marek Ludwikow ◽

Dongyang Zhang ◽

Abraham Z. Snyder ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Visual Cortex ◽

Functional Connectivity ◽

Primary Visual Cortex ◽

Blood Oxygen Level Dependent ◽

Extrastriate Cortex ◽

Connected Components ◽

Bold Signal ◽

Thalamic Nuclei ◽

Eyes Closed ◽

Visual Areas

We investigated the effects of resting state type on blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal and functional connectivity in two paradigms: participants either alternated between fixation and eyes closed or maintained fixation or eyes closed throughout each scan. The BOLD signal and functional connectivity of lower and higher tiers of the visual cortical hierarchy were found to be differentially modulated during eyes closed versus fixation. Fixation was associated with greater mean BOLD signals in primary visual cortex and lower mean BOLD signals in extrastriate visual areas than periods of eyes closed. In addition, analysis of thalamocortical functional connectivity during scans in which participants maintained fixation showed synchronized BOLD fluctuations between those thalamic nuclei whose mean BOLD signal was systematically modulated during alternating epochs of eyes closed and fixation, primary visual cortex and the attention network, while during eyes closed negatively correlated fluctuations were seen between the same thalamic nuclei and extrastriate visual areas. Finally, in all visual areas the amplitude of spontaneous BOLD fluctuations was greater during eyes closed than during fixation. The dissociation between early and late tiers of visual cortex, which characterizes both mean and functionally connected components of the BOLD signal, may depend on the reorganization of thalamocortical networks. Since dissociated changes in local blood flow also characterize transitions between different stages of sleep and wakefulness (Braun AR, Balkin TJ, Wesenten NJ, Gwadry F, Carson RE, Varga M, Baldwin P, Belenky G, Herscovitch P. Science 279: 91–95, 1998), our results suggest that dissociated endogenous neural activity in primary and extrastriate cortex may represent a general aspect of brain function.

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