Changes of child’s brain activity and functional connectivity in transformational geometry program: An fNIRS study

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuang Zhang ◽  
Gui-Ping Gao ◽  
Wen-Qing Shi ◽  
Biao Li ◽  
Qi Lin ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Previous studies have demonstrated that strabismus amblyopia can result in markedly brain function alterations. However, the differences in spontaneous brain activities of strabismus amblyopia (SA) patients still remain unclear. Therefore, the current study intended to employthe voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) method to investigate the intrinsic brain activity changes in SA patients. Purpose To investigate the changes in cerebral hemispheric functional connections in patients with SA and their relationship with clinical manifestations using the VMHC method. Material and methods In the present study, a total of 17 patients with SA (eight males and nine females) and 17 age- and weight-matched healthy control (HC) groups were enrolled. Based on the VMHC method, all subjects were examined by functional magnetic resonance imaging. The functional interaction between cerebral hemispheres was directly evaluated. The Pearson’s correlation test was used to analyze the clinical features of patients with SA. In addition, their mean VMHC signal values and the receiver operating characteristic curve were used to distinguish patients with SA and HC groups. Results Compared with HC group, patients with SA had higher VMHC values in bilateral cingulum ant, caudate, hippocampus, and cerebellum crus 1. Moreover, the VMHC values of some regions were positively correlated with some clinical manifestations. In addition, receiver operating characteristic curves presented higher diagnostic value in these areas. Conclusion SA subjects showed abnormal brain interhemispheric functional connectivity in visual pathways, which might give some instructive information for understanding the neurological mechanisms of SA patients.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 1984-1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dardo Tomasi ◽  
Nora D Volkow

Abstract The origin of the “resting-state” brain activity recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is still uncertain. Here we provide evidence for the neurovascular origins of the amplitude of the low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and the local functional connectivity density (lFCD) by comparing them with task-induced blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) responses, which are considered a proxy for neuronal activation. Using fMRI data for 2 different tasks (Relational and Social) collected by the Human Connectome Project in 426 healthy adults, we show that ALFF and lFCD have linear associations with the BOLD response. This association was significantly attenuated by a novel task signal regression (TSR) procedure, indicating that task performance enhances lFCD and ALFF in activated regions. We also show that lFCD predicts BOLD activation patterns, as was recently shown for other functional connectivity metrics, which corroborates that resting functional connectivity architecture impacts brain activation responses. Thus, our findings indicate a common source for BOLD responses, ALFF and lFCD, which is consistent with the neurovascular origin of local hemodynamic synchrony presumably reflecting coordinated fluctuations in neuronal activity. This study also supports the development of task-evoked functional connectivity density mapping.


Author(s):  
J.P. Owen ◽  
D.P. Wipf ◽  
H.T. Attias ◽  
K. Sekihara ◽  
S.S. Nagarajan

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (15) ◽  
pp. e2014464118
Author(s):  
Jill M. Goldstein ◽  
Justine E. Cohen ◽  
Klara Mareckova ◽  
Laura Holsen ◽  
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli ◽  
...  

Stress is associated with numerous chronic diseases, beginning in fetal development with in utero exposures (prenatal stress) impacting offspring’s risk for disorders later in life. In previous studies, we demonstrated adverse maternal in utero immune activity on sex differences in offspring neurodevelopment at age seven and adult risk for major depression and psychoses. Here, we hypothesized that in utero exposure to maternal proinflammatory cytokines has sex-dependent effects on specific brain circuitry regulating stress and immune function in the offspring that are retained across the lifespan. Using a unique prenatal cohort, we tested this hypothesis in 80 adult offspring, equally divided by sex, followed from in utero development to midlife. Functional MRI results showed that exposure to proinflammatory cytokines in utero was significantly associated with sex differences in brain activity and connectivity during response to negative stressful stimuli 45 y later. Lower maternal TNF-α levels were significantly associated with higher hypothalamic activity in both sexes and higher functional connectivity between hypothalamus and anterior cingulate only in men. Higher prenatal levels of IL-6 were significantly associated with higher hippocampal activity in women alone. When examined in relation to the anti-inflammatory effects of IL-10, the ratio TNF-α:IL-10 was associated with sex-dependent effects on hippocampal activity and functional connectivity with the hypothalamus. Collectively, results suggested that adverse levels of maternal in utero proinflammatory cytokines and the balance of pro- to anti-inflammatory cytokines impact brain development of offspring in a sexually dimorphic manner that persists across the lifespan.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Fafrowicz ◽  
Bartosz Bohaterewicz ◽  
Anna Ceglarek ◽  
Monika Cichocka ◽  
Koryna Lewandowska ◽  
...  

Human performance, alertness, and most biological functions express rhythmic fluctuations across a 24-hour-period. This phenomenon is believed to originate from differences in both circadian and homeostatic sleep-wake regulatory processes. Interactions between these processes result in time-of-day modulations of behavioral performance as well as brain activity patterns. Although the basic mechanism of the 24-hour clock is conserved across evolution, there are interindividual differences in the timing of sleep-wake cycles, subjective alertness and functioning throughout the day. The study of circadian typology differences has increased during the last few years, especially research on extreme chronotypes, which provide a unique way to investigate the effects of sleep-wake regulation on cerebral mechanisms. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the influence of chronotype and time-of-day on resting-state functional connectivity. 29 extreme morning- and 34 evening-type participants underwent two fMRI sessions: about one hour after wake-up time (morning) and about ten hours after wake-up time (evening), scheduled according to their declared habitual sleep-wake pattern on a regular working day. Analysis of obtained neuroimaging data disclosed only an effect of time of day on resting-state functional connectivity; there were different patterns of functional connectivity between morning and evening sessions. The results of our study showed no differences between extreme morning-type and evening-type individuals. We demonstrate that circadian and homeostatic influences on the resting-state functional connectivity have a universal character, unaffected by circadian typology.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Alexandra Anagnostopoulou ◽  
Charis Styliadis ◽  
Panagiotis Kartsidis ◽  
Evangelia Romanopoulou ◽  
Vasiliki Zilidou ◽  
...  

Understanding the neuroplastic capacity of people with Down syndrome (PwDS) can potentially reveal the causal relationship between aberrant brain organization and phenotypic characteristics. We used resting-state EEG recordings to identify how a neuroplasticity-triggering training protocol relates to changes in the functional connectivity of the brain’s intrinsic cortical networks. Brain activity of 12 PwDS before and after a 10-week protocol of combined physical and cognitive training was statistically compared to quantify changes in directed functional connectivity in conjunction with psychosomatometric assessments. PwDS showed increased connectivity within the left hemisphere and from left-to-right hemisphere, as well as increased physical and cognitive performance. Our findings reveal a strong adaptive neuroplastic reorganization as a result of the training that leads to a less-random network with a more pronounced hierarchical organization. Our results go beyond previous findings by indicating a transition to a healthier, more efficient, and flexible network architecture, with improved integration and segregation abilities in the brain of PwDS. Resting-state electrophysiological brain activity is used here for the first time to display meaningful relationships to underlying Down syndrome processes and outcomes of importance in a translational inquiry. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT04390321.


Author(s):  
Alba Xifra-Porxas ◽  
Michalis Kassinopoulos ◽  
Georgios D. Mitsis

AbstractHuman brain connectivity yields significant potential as a noninvasive biomarker. Several studies have used fMRI-based connectivity fingerprinting to characterize individual patterns of brain activity. However, it is not clear whether these patterns mainly reflect neural activity or the effect of physiological and motion processes. To answer this question, we capitalize on a large data sample from the Human Connectome Project and rigorously investigate the contribution of the aforementioned processes on functional connectivity (FC) and time-varying FC, as well as their contribution to subject identifiability. We find that head motion, as well as heart rate and breathing fluctuations, induce artifactual connectivity within distinct resting-state networks and that they correlate with recurrent patterns in time-varying FC. Even though the spatiotemporal signatures of these processes yield above-chance levels in subject identifiability, removing their effects at the preprocessing stage improves identifiability, suggesting a neural component underpinning the inter-individual differences in connectivity.


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