Occipital cortical thickness in very low birth weight born adolescents predicts altered neural specialization of visual semantic category related neural networks

Altered functional connectivity strength of primary visual cortex in subjects with thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy

Our objective was to explore the disparities in the intrinsic functional connectivity (FC) patterns of primary visual cortex (V1) between patients with thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) and healthy controls (HCs) utilizing resting-state functional MRI. Twenty-one patients with TAO (14 males and 7 females; mean age: 54.17 ± 4.83 years) and 21 well-matched HCs (14 males and 7 females; mean age: 55.17 ± 5.37 years) underwent functional MRI scans in the resting-state. We assessed modifications in the intrinsic FC patterns of the V1 in TAO patients using the FC method. Subsequently, the identified alterations in FC regions in the analysis were selected as classification features to distinguish TAO patients from HCs through the support vector machine (SVM) method. The results indicated that, in comparison to HCs, patients with TAO exhibited notably reduced FC values between the left V1 and the bilateral calcarine (CAL), lingual gyrus (LING) and superior occipital gyrus, as well as between the right V1 and the bilateral CAL/LING and the right cerebellum. Furthermore, the SVM classification model based on FC maps demonstrated effective performance in distinguishing TAO patients from HCs, achieving an accuracy of 61.9% using the FC of the left V1 and 64.29% using the FC of the right V1. Our study revealed that patients with TAO manifested disruptions in FC between the V1 and higher visual regions during rest. This might indicate that TAO patients could present with impaired top-down modulations, visual imagery and vision-motor function. These insights could be valuable in understanding the underlying neurobiological mechanisms of vision impairment in individuals with TAO.

Longstanding Auditory Sensory and Semantic Differences in Preterm Born Children

More than 10% of births are preterm, and the long-term consequences on sensory and semantic processing of non-linguistic information remain poorly understood. 17 very preterm-born children (born at < 33 weeks gestational age) and 15 full-term controls were tested at 10 years old with an auditory object recognition task, while 64-channel auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were recorded. Sounds consisted of living (animal and human vocalizations) and manmade objects (e.g. household objects, instruments, and tools). Despite similar recognition behavior, AEPs strikingly differed between full-term and preterm children. Starting at 50ms post-stimulus onset, AEPs from preterm children differed topographically from their full-term counterparts. Over the 108-224ms post-stimulus period, full-term children showed stronger AEPs in response to living objects, whereas preterm born children showed the reverse pattern; i.e. stronger AEPs in response to manmade objects. Differential brain activity between semantic categories could reliably classify children according to their preterm status. Moreover, this opposing pattern of differential responses to semantic categories of sounds was also observed in source estimations within a network of occipital, temporal and frontal regions. This study highlights how early life experience in terms of preterm birth shapes sensory and object processing later on in life.

Asthma's effect on brain connectivity and cognitive decline

Objective

To investigate the changes in dynamic voxel mirror homotopy connection (dVMHC) between cerebral hemispheres in patients with asthma.

Methods

Our study was designed using a case-control method. A total of 31 subjects with BA and 31 healthy subjects with matching basic information were examined using rsfMRI. We also calculated and obtained the dVMHC value between the cerebral cortexes.

Results

Compared with the normal control group, the dVMHC of the lingual gyrus (Ling) and the calcarine sulcus (CAL), which represented the visual network (VN), increased significantly in the asthma group, while the dVMHC of the medial superior frontal gyrus (MSFG), the anterior/middle/posterior cingulate gyrus (A/M/PCG), and the supplementary motor area (SMA) of the sensorimotor network decreased significantly in the asthma group.

Conclusion

This study showed that the ability of emotion regulation and the efficiency of visual and cognitive information processing in patients with BA was lower than in those in the HC group. The dVMHC analysis can be used to sensitively evaluate oxygen saturation, visual function changes, and attention bias caused by emotional disorders in patients with asthma, as well as to predict airway hyperresponsiveness, inflammatory progression, and dyspnea.

Reduction of Interhemispheric Homotopic Connectivity in Cognitive and Visual Information Processing Pathways in Patients With Thyroid-Associated Ophthalmopathy

Purpose

Thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) is a vision threatening autoimmune and inflammatory orbital disease, and has been reported to be associated with a wide range of structural and functional abnormalities of bilateral hemispheres. However, whether the interhemisphere functional connectivity (FC) of TAO patients is altered still remain unclear. A new technique called voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) combined with support vector machine (SVM) method was used in the present study to explore interhemispheric homotopic functional connectivity alterations in patients with TAO.

Methods

A total of 21 TAO patients (14 males and 7 females) and 21 wellmatched healthy controls (HCs, 14 males and 7 females), respectively, underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning in the resting state. We evaluated alterations in the resting state functional connectivity between hemispheres by applying VMHC method and then selected these abnormal brain regions as seed areas for subsequent study using FC method. Furthermore, the observed changes of regions in the VMHC analysis were chosen as classification features to differentiate patients with TAO from HCs through support vector machine (SVM) method.

Results

The results showed that compared with HCs, TAO patients showed significantly lower VMHC values in the bilateral postcentral gyrus, lingual gyrus, calcarine, middle temporal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus and angular. Moreover, significantly decreased FC values were found between the right postcentral gyrus/lingual gyrus/calcarine and left lingual gyrus/cuneus/superior occipital gyrus, left postcentral gyrus/lingual gyrus/calcarine and right lingual gyrus/ middle temporal gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus and left cerebellum-8/lingual gyrus/middle occipital gyrus/supplementary motor area, left middle temporal gyrus and right middle occipital gyrus, right middle occipital gyrus/angular and left middle temporal pole (voxel-level p < 0.01, Gaussian random field correction, cluster-level p < 0.05). The SVM classification model achieved good performance in differentiating TAO patients from HCs (total accuracy: 73.81%; area under the curve: 0.79).

Conclusion

The present study revealed that the altered interhemisphere interaction and integration of information involved in cognitive and visual information processing pathways including the postcentral gyrus, cuneus, cerebellum, angular, widespread visual cortex and temporal cortex in patients with TAO relative to HC group. VMHC variability had potential value for accurately and specifically distinguishing patients with TAO from HCs. The new findings may provide novel insights into the neurological mechanisms underlying visual and cognitive disorders in patients with TAO.