scholarly journals Children with Strabismus and Amblyopia Presented Abnormal Spontaneous Brain Activities Measured through Fractional Amplitude of Low-frequency Fluctuation (fALFF)

Author(s):  
Yi-Dan Shi ◽  
Li-Qi Liu ◽  
Rong-Bin Liang ◽  
Qian-Min Ge ◽  
Qiu-Yu Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose: Based on fMRI technology, we explored whether children with strabismus and amblyopia (SA) showed significant change in fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) values in specific brain regions compared with healthy controls, and whether this change could point to the clinical manifestations and pathogenesis of children with strabismus to a certain extent.Methods: We enrolled 23 children with SA and same number matched healthy control in the ophthalmology department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, and the whole brain was scanned by rs-fMRI. The fALFF value of each brain area was derived to examine whether there is a statistical difference in the two groups. Meanwhile, ROC curve was made in a view to evaluate whether this difference proves useful as a diagnostic index. Finally, analyze whether changes in the fALFF value of some specific brain regions are related to clinical manifestations.Results: report to HCs children with SA presented a decreased fALFF values in left temporal pole: the superior temporal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus, right supplementary motor area. Meanwhile, they also showed higher fALFF values in specific brain areas, which included left precentral gyrus, left inferior Parietal, left Precuneus.Conclusion: Children with SA showed abnormal fALFF values in different brain regions. Most of these regions were allocated to the visual formation pathway. The eye movement-related pathway or other visual-related pathways, suggesting the pathological mechanism of the patient.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li-Qi Liu ◽  
Yi-Dan Shi ◽  
Rong-Bin Liang ◽  
Qian-Min Ge ◽  
Qiu-Yu Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose Based on fMRI technology, we explored whether children with strabismus and amblyopia (SA) showed significant alteration in fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) values in specific brain regions compared with healthy controls, and whether this change could indicate the clinical manifestations and pathogenesis of children with strabismus to a certain extent. Methods 23 children with strabismus amblyopia and same number matched healthy control was registered in the ophthalmology department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, and the whole brain was scanned by rs-fMRI. The fALFF value of each brain area was derived to explore whether there is a statistical difference in the two groups. Meanwhile, ROC curve was made in a view to evaluate whether this difference is of value as a diagnostic index. Finally, analyze whether the changes in the fALFF value of some specific brain regions are related to clinical manifestations Results report to HCs children with SA presented a decreased fALFF values in left temporal pole: the superior temporal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus, right supplementary motor area. Meanwhile, they also showed higher fALFF values in specific brain areas, which included left precentral gyrus, left inferior Parietal, left Precuneus. Conclusion Children with SA showed abnormal fALFF values in different brain regions. Most of these regions were allocated to the visual formation pathway. The eye movement-related pathway or other visual-related pathways, suggesting the pathological mechanism of the patient.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bei Luo ◽  
Yue Lu ◽  
Chang Qiu ◽  
Wenwen Dong ◽  
Chen Xue ◽  
...  

BackgroundTransient improvement in motor symptoms are immediately observed in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) after an electrode has been implanted into the subthalamic nucleus (STN) for deep brain stimulation (DBS). This phenomenon is known as the microlesion effect (MLE). However, the underlying mechanisms of MLE is poorly understood.PurposeWe utilized resting state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) to evaluate changes in spontaneous brain activity and networks in PD patients during the microlesion period after DBS.MethodOverall, 37 PD patients and 13 gender- and age-matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited for this study. Rs-MRI information was collected from PD patients three days before DBS and one day after DBS, whereas the HCs group was scanned once. We utilized the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) method in order to analyze differences in spontaneous whole-brain activity among all subjects. Furthermore, functional connectivity (FC) was applied to investigate connections between other brain regions and brain areas with significantly different ALFF before and after surgery in PD patients.ResultRelative to the PD-Pre-DBS group, the PD-Post-DBS group had higher ALFF in the right putamen, right inferior frontal gyrus, right precentral gyrus and lower ALFF in right angular gyrus, right precuneus, right posterior cingulate gyrus (PCC), left insula, left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), bilateral middle frontal gyrus and bilateral superior frontal gyrus (dorsolateral). Functional connectivity analysis revealed that these brain regions with significantly different ALFF scores demonstrated abnormal FC, largely in the temporal, prefrontal cortices and default mode network (DMN).ConclusionThe subthalamic microlesion caused by DBS in PD was found to not only improve the activity of the basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuit, but also reduce the activity of the DMN and executive control network (ECN) related brain regions. Results from this study provide new insights into the mechanism of MLE.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaohui Yin ◽  
Lingjun Chen ◽  
Mingyue Ma ◽  
Hong Zhang ◽  
Ming Gao ◽  
...  

Strabismus occurs in about 2% of children and may result in amblyopia or lazy eyes and loss of depth perception. However, whether/how long-term strabismus shapes the brain structure and functions in children with concomitant strabismus (CS) is still unclear. In this study, a total of 26 patients with CS and 28 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy controls (HCs) underwent structural and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging examination. The cortical thickness and amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) were calculated to assess the structural and functional plasticity in children with CS. Compared with HCs group, patients with CS showed increased cortical thickness in the precentral gyrus and angular gyrus while decreased cortical thickness in the left intraparietal sulcus, parieto-occipital sulcus, superior and middle temporal gyrus, right ventral premotor cortex, anterior insula, orbitofrontal cortex, and paracentral lobule. Meanwhile, CS patients exhibited increased ALFF in the prefrontal cortex and superior temporal gyrus, and decreased ALFF in the caudate and hippocampus. These results show that children with CS have abnormal structure and function in brain regions subserving eye movement, controls, and high-order cognitive functions. Our findings revealed the structural and functional abnormalities induced by CS and may provide new insight into the underlying neural mechanisms for CS.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongmei Gao ◽  
Mingzhou Gao ◽  
Li An ◽  
Yanhong Yu ◽  
Jieqiong Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Most studies on the mechanism behind premenstrual syndrome (PMS) have focused on fluctuating hormones, but little evidence exists regarding functional abnormalities in the affected brain regions of college students. Thus, the aim of this study is to localize PMS's abnormal brain regions by BOLD-fMRI in college students.Methods: Thirteen PMS patients and fifteen healthy control (HC) subjects underwent a BOLD-fMRI scan during the luteal phase induced by depressive emotion pictures. The BOLD-fMRI data were processed by SPM 8 software and rest software based on MATLAB platform. Each cluster volume threshold (cluster) was greater than 389 continuous voxels, and the brain area with single voxel threshold P < 0.05 (after correction) was defined as the area with a significant difference. The emotion report form and the instruction implementation checklist were used to evaluate the emotion induced by picture.Results: Compared to the HC, right inferior occipital gyrus, right middle occipital gyrus, right lingual gyrus, right fusiform gyrus, right inferior temporal gyrus, cerebelum_crus1_R,cerebelum_6_R, culmen, the cerebellum anterior lobe, tuber, cerebellar tonsil of PMS patients were enhanced activation. Sub-lobar,sub-gyral,extra-nuclear,right orbit part of superior frontal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus, right Orbit part of inferior frontal gyrus, limbic lobe, right insula, bilateral anterior and adjacent cingulate gyrus, bilateral caudate, caudate head, bilateral putamen, left globus pallidus were decreased activation.Conclusion: Our findings may improve our understanding of the neural mechanisms involved in PMS.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoshuang Liu ◽  
Runtian Cheng ◽  
Li Chen ◽  
Junwei Gong ◽  
Tianyou Luo ◽  
...  

Patients with subcortical ischemic vascular disease (SIVD) exhibit a high risk of cognitive impairment that might be caused by neurologic deficits and vascular injuries. However, the mechanism remains unknown. In current study, 24 normal controls (NC) and 54 SIVD patients, including 26 SIVD patients with no cognitive impairment (SIVD-NCI) and 28 SIVD patients with mild cognitive impairment (SIVD-MCI) underwent the resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) and neuropsychological assessments. We combined regional homogeneity (ReHo) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) by using the global ReHo-CBF correlations coefficient and the ReHo/CBF ratio to detect the inner link between neuronal activity and vascular responses. Correlations between the ReHo/CBF ratio and neuropsychological assessments were explored in patients with SIVD. As a result, we identified significantly decreased global ReHo-CBF coupling in the SIVD-NCI group and SIVD- MCI group with respect to the NC. The SIVD-MCI group showed more serious decoupling of the global ReHo-CBF correlation. We also found a significantly abnormal ReHo/CBF ratio predominantly located in cognitive-related brain regions, including the left insula, right middle temporal gyrus, right precuneus, left precentral gyrus, and left inferior parietal lobule but not the supramarginal and angular gyri. The SIVD-MCI group showed more severe disorders of neurovascular coupling than the other two groups. Moreover, the ReHo/CBF ratio in the left precentral gyrus of the SIVD-NCI group exhibited a positive correlation with the MMSE scores. These findings suggested that patients with SIVD show abnormal neurovascular coupling at the early stage of the disease and during disease development. It might be associated with disease severity and cognitive impairment. Neurovascular decoupling in brain may be a possible neuropathological mechanism of SIVD.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Magdalena Chechlacz ◽  
Anna Terry ◽  
Pia Rotshtein ◽  
Wai-Ling Bickerton ◽  
Glyn Humphreys

Extinction is diagnosed when patients respond to a single contralesional item but fail to detect this item when an ipsilesional item is present concurrently. It is considered to be a disorder of attention characterized by a striking bias for the ipsilesional stimulus at the expense of the contralesional stimulus. Extinction has been studied mainly in the visual modality but it occurs also in other sensory modalities (touch, audition) and hence can be considered a multisensory phenomenon. The functional and neuroanatomical relations between extinction in different modalities are poorly understood. It could be hypothesised that extinction deficits in different modalities emerge after damage to both common (attention specific) and distinct (modality specific) brain regions. Here, we used voxel-based morphometry to examine the neuronal substrates of visual versus tactile extinction in a large group of stroke patients (). We found that extinction deficits in the two modalities were significantly correlated (; ). Lesions to inferior parietal lobule and middle frontal gyrus were linked to visual extinction, while lesions involving the superior temporal gyrus were associated with tactile extinction. Damage within the middle temporal gyrus was linked to both types of deficits but interestingly these lesions extended into the middle occipital gyrus in patients with visual but not tactile extinction. White matter damage within the temporal lobe was associated with both types of deficits, including lesions within long association pathways involved in spatial attention. Our findings indicate both common and distinct neural mechanisms of visual and tactile extinction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
You-ming Zhang ◽  
Ya-fei Kang ◽  
Jun-jie Zeng ◽  
Li Li ◽  
Jian-ming Gao ◽  
...  

Radiation encephalopathy (RE) is an important potential complication in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) who undergo radiotherapy (RT) that can affect the quality of life. However, a functional imaging biomarker of pre-symptomatic RE has not yet been established. This study aimed to assess radiation-induced gray matter functional alterations and explore fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) as an imaging biomarker for predicting or diagnosing RE in patients with NPC. A total of 60 patients with NPC were examined, 21 in the pre-RT cohort and 39 in the post-RT cohort. Patients in the post-RT cohort were further divided into two subgroups according to the occurrence of RE in follow-up: post-RT non−RE (n = 21) and post-RT REprovedinfollow−up (n = 18). Surface-based and volume-based fALFF were used to detect radiation-induced functional alterations. Functional derived features were then adopted to construct a predictive model for the diagnosis of RE. We observed that surface-based fALFF could sensitively detect radiation-induced functional alterations in the intratemporal brain regions (such as the hippocampus and superior temporal gyrus), as well as the extratemporal regions (such as the insula and prefrontal lobe); however, no significant intergroup differences were observed using volume-based fALFF. No significant correlation between fALFF and radiation dose to the ipsilateral temporal lobe was observed. Support vector machine (SVM) analysis revealed that surface-based fALFF in the bilateral superior temporal gyri and left insula exhibited impressive performance (accuracy = 80.49%) in identifying patients likely to develop RE. We conclude that surface-based fALFF may serve as a sensitive imaging biomarker in the prediction of RE.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junli Li ◽  
Haiyan Liao ◽  
Tianyu Wang ◽  
Yuheng Zi ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
...  

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate alterations in regional homogeneity (ReHo) in early Parkinson’s disease (PD) at different Hoehn and Yahr (HY) stages and to demonstrate the relationships between altered brain regions and clinical scale scores.Methods: We recruited 75 PD patients, including 43 with mild PD (PD-mild; HY stage: 1.0–1.5) and 32 with moderate PD (PD-moderate; HY stage: 2.0–2.5). We also recruited 37 age- and sex-matched healthy subjects as healthy controls (HC). All subjects underwent neuropsychological assessments and a 3.0 Tesla magnetic resonance scanning. Regional homogeneity of blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals was used to characterize regional cerebral function. Correlative relationships between mean ReHo values and clinical data were then explored.Results: Compared to the HC group, the PD-mild group exhibited increased ReHo values in the right cerebellum, while the PD-moderate group exhibited increased ReHo values in the bilateral cerebellum, and decreased ReHo values in the right superior temporal gyrus, the right Rolandic operculum, the right postcentral gyrus, and the right precentral gyrus. Reho value of right Pre/Postcentral was negatively correlated with HY stage. Compared to the PD-moderate group, the PD-mild group showed reduced ReHo values in the right superior orbital gyrus and the right rectus, in which the ReHo value was negatively correlated with cognition.Conclusion: The right superior orbital gyrus and right rectus may serve as a differential indicator for mild and moderate PD. Subjects with moderate PD had a greater scope for ReHo alterations in the cortex and compensation in the cerebellum than those with mild PD. PD at HY stages of 2.0–2.5 may already be classified as Braak stages 5 and 6 in terms of pathology. Our study revealed the different patterns of brain function in a resting state in PD at different HY stages and may help to elucidate the neural function and early diagnosis of patients with PD.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min-Jie Chen ◽  
Rong Huang ◽  
Qian-Min Ge ◽  
Li-Juan Zhang ◽  
Hui-Ye Shu ◽  
...  

Abstract To date, no in-depth study has been conducted on the intrinsic pathological relationship between altered brain activity and related behavioral changes in patients with orbital fracture (OF).The present research aimed to explore the potential functional network cerebrum activities in patients with OF using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging–fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (rsfMRI-fALFF). 20 patients with OF and 20 healthy controls (HCs) were included, closely matched in terms of gender, age, weight and education level. To record spontaneous cerebral activity changes, the rsfMRI-fALFF tool was applied. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and Pearson’s correlation analysis were used to analyze mean fALFF values. The Hospital Depression and Anxiety scale was applied to reveal the relationship between emotional states and fALFF values of the right superior temporal gyrus in OF patients.Compared with HCs, significantly lower fALFF values were detected in the left anterior cingulate gyrus (LACG) and right superior temporal gyrus (RSTG) in patients with OF. The mean fALFF values of the RSTG negatively correlated with the depression score as well as anxiety score.The finding of abnormal spontaneous activities in cerebral regions may contribute to more comprehensive understanding of the potential neural network changes in patients with OF.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan Qiu ◽  
Min Yang ◽  
Sujuan Li ◽  
Ziwei Teng ◽  
Kun Jin ◽  
...  

Background: Discriminating between major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) remains challenging and cognitive deficits in MDD and BD are generally recognized. In this study, the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) approach was performed to explore neural activity and cognition in first-episode, drug-naïve BD and MDD patients, as well as the relationship between altered fALFF values and clinical or psychometric variables.Methods: A total of 21 BD patients, 25 MDD patients, and 41 healthy controls (HCs) completed clinical assessments and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans in this study. The rs-fMRI data were analyzed by fALFF method and Pearson correlation analyses were performed between altered fALFF values and clinical variables or cognition. Support vector machine (SVM) was adopted to identify the three groups from each other with abnormal fALFF values in the brain regions obtained by group comparisons.Results: (1) The fALFF values were significantly different in the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and left precuneus among three groups. In comparison to HCs, BD showed increased fALFF values in the right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) and decreased fALFF values in the right middle temporal gyrus, while MDD showed decreased fALFF values in the right cerebellar lobule IV/V. In comparison to MDD, BD showed decreased fALFF values in bilateral posterior cingulate gyrus and the right cerebellar lobule VIII/IX. (2) In the BD group, a negative correlation was found between increased fALFF values in the right ITG and years of education, and a positive correlation was found between decreased fALFF values in the right cerebellar lobule VIII/IX and visuospatial abilities. (3) The fALFF values in the right cerebellar lobule VIII/IX may have the ability to discriminate BD patients from MDD patients, with sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy all over 0.70.Conclusions: Abnormal brain activities were observed in BD and MDD and were related with cognition in BD patients. The abnormality in the cerebellum can be potentially used to identify BD from MDD patients.


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