scholarly journals Motor Control Deficits in Facial Synkinesis Patients: Neuroimaging Evidences of Cerebral Cortex Involvement

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia-jia Wu ◽  
Ye-chen Lu ◽  
Mou-xiong Zheng ◽  
Xu-yun Hua ◽  
Jian-guang Xu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Facial Nerve ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Cortical Plasticity ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Sensory Function ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Motor Control System ◽  
Facial Synkinesis

Objective. Facial synkinesis is a severe sequelae of facial nerve malfunction. Once the synkinesis is established, it is extremely difficult for patients to recover. Given that the restoration of motor or sensory function after peripheral nerve injury was closely related with cortical plasticity, we investigated cortical plasticity in facial synkinesis patients by the frequency-specific data which remains largely uncharacterized. Materials and Methods. Resting-state fMRI was conducted in 20 facial synkinesis patients and 19 healthy controls, and the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) in five different frequency bands (slow-6: 0-0.01 Hz; slow-5: 0.01-0.027 Hz; slow-4: 0.027-0.073 Hz; slow-3: 0.073-0.167 Hz; and slow-2: 0.167-0.25 Hz) was calculated, respectively. And the relationship between ALFF and clinical outcomes was also analyzed. Results. Comparing with the healthy controls, facial synkinesis patients showed significantly different ALFF values, mainly in the sensorimotor areas. Furthermore, increased ALFF of the ipsilateral insula in the slow-6 band was significantly related with better facial nerve function. Conclusion. Increased ALFF values in the ipsilateral insula might reflect an abnormal state of hypercompensation in motor control of facial synkinesis patients. It provided valuable spatial information about the functionally aberrant regions, which implied the possible involvement of motor control system in facial synkinesis.

scholarly journals Spinal Cord Resting State Activity in Individuals With Fibromyalgia Who Take Opioids

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine T. Martucci ◽  
Kenneth A. Weber ◽  
Sean C. Mackey
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Chronic Pain ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Main Hypothesis ◽  
Graph Metrics ◽  
Patient Groups

Chronic pain coincides with myriad functional alterations throughout the brain and spinal cord. While spinal cord mechanisms of chronic pain have been extensively characterized in animal models and in vitro, to date, research in patients with chronic pain has focused only very minimally on the spinal cord. Previously, spinal cord functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) identified regional alterations in spinal cord activity in patients (who were not taking opioids) with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. Here, in patients with fibromyalgia who take opioids (N = 15), we compared spinal cord resting-state fMRI data vs. patients with fibromyalgia not taking opioids (N = 15) and healthy controls (N = 14). We hypothesized that the opioid (vs. non-opioid) patient group would show greater regional alterations in spinal cord activity (i.e., the amplitude of low frequency fluctuations or ALFF, a measure of regional spinal cord activity). However, we found that regional spinal cord activity in the opioid group was more similar to healthy controls, while regional spinal cord activity in the non-opioid group showed more pronounced differences (i.e., ventral increases and dorsal decreases in regional ALFF) vs. healthy controls. Across patient groups, self-reported fatigue correlated with regional differences in spinal cord activity. Additionally, spinal cord functional connectivity and graph metrics did not differ among groups. Our findings suggest that, contrary to our main hypothesis, patients with fibromyalgia who take opioids do not have greater alterations in regional spinal cord activity. Thus, regional spinal cord activity may be less imbalanced in patients taking opioids compared to patients not taking opioids.

scholarly journals Performance of temporal and spatial ICA in identifying and removing low-frequency physiological and motion effects in resting-state fMRI

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Golestani ◽  
J. Jean Chen
Keyword(s):  
Resting State ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Hybrid Approach ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Lower Amount ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Noise Sources ◽  
Physiological Processes ◽  
Recent Developments

Effective separation of signal from noise (including physiological processes and head motion) is one of the chief challenges for improving the sensitivity and specificity of resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) measurements and has a profound impact when these noise sources vary between populations. Independent component analysis (ICA) is an approach for addressing these challenges. Conventionally, due to the lower amount of temporal than spatial information in rs-fMRI data, spatial ICA (sICA) is the method of choice. However, with recent developments in accelerated fMRI acquisitions, the temporal information is becoming enriched to the point that the temporal ICA (tICA) has become more feasible. This is particularly relevant as physiological processes and motion exhibit very different spatial and temporal characteristics when it comes to rs-fMRI applications, leading us to conduct a comparison of the performance of sICA and tICA in addressing these types of noise. In this study, we embrace the novel practice of using theory (simulations) to guide our interpretation of empirical data. We find empirically that sICA can identify more noise-related signal components than tICA. However, on the merit of functional-connectivity results, we find that while sICA is more adept at reducing whole-brain motion effects, tICA performs better in dealing with physiological effects. These interpretations are corroborated by our simulation results. The overall message of this study is that if ICA denoising is to be used for rs-fMRI, there is merit in considering a hybrid approach in which physiological and motion-related noise are each corrected for using their respective best-suited ICA approach.

scholarly journals Altered Dynamic Functional Connectivity of Cuneus in Schizophrenia Patients: A Resting-State fMRI Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 11392
Author(s):  
Charles Okanda Nyatega ◽  
Li Qiang ◽  
Mohammed Jajere Adamu ◽  
Ayesha Younis ◽  
Halima Bello Kawuwa
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Temporal Correlation ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Mental Condition ◽  
Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Dynamic Functional Connectivity ◽  
Sliding Windows

Objective: Schizophrenia (SZ) is a functional mental condition that has a significant impact on patients’ social lives. As a result, accurate diagnosis of SZ has attracted researchers’ interest. Based on previous research, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) reported neural alterations in SZ. In this study, we attempted to investigate if dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) could reveal changes in temporal interactions between SZ patients and healthy controls (HC) beyond static functional connectivity (sFC) in the cuneus, using the publicly available COBRE dataset. Methods: Sliding windows were applied to 72 SZ patients’ and 74 healthy controls’ (HC) rsfMRI data to generate temporal correlation maps and, finally, evaluate mean strength (dFC-Str), variability (dFC-SD and ALFF) in each window, and the dwelling time. The difference in functional connectivity (FC) of the cuneus between two groups was compared using a two-sample t-test. Results: Our findings demonstrated decreased mean strength connectivity between the cuneus and calcarine, the cuneus and lingual gyrus, and between the cuneus and middle temporal gyrus (TPOmid) in subjects with SZ. Moreover, no difference was detected in variability (standard deviation and the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation), the dwelling times of all states, or static functional connectivity (sFC) between the groups. Conclusions: Our verdict suggest that dynamic functional connectivity analyses may play crucial roles in unveiling abnormal patterns that would be obscured in static functional connectivity, providing promising impetus for understanding schizophrenia disease.

scholarly journals The Effects of Acupuncture at Real or Sham Acupoints on the Intrinsic Brain Activity in Mild Cognitive Impairment Patients

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baohui Jia ◽  
Zhishun Liu ◽  
Baoquan Min ◽  
Zhenchang Wang ◽  
Aihong Zhou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Resting State Fmri ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Brain Network ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Brain

Accumulating neuroimaging studies in humans have shown that acupuncture can modulate a widely distributed brain network in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. Acupuncture at different acupoints could exert different modulatory effects on the brain network. However, whether acupuncture at real or sham acupoints can produce different effects on the brain network in MCI or AD patients remains unclear. Using resting-state fMRI, we reported that acupuncture at Taixi (KI3) induced amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) change of different brain regions in MCI patients from those shown in the healthy controls. In MCI patients, acupuncture at KI3 increased or decreased ALFF in the different regions from those activated by acupuncture in the healthy controls. Acupuncture at the sham acupoint in MCI patients activated the different brain regions from those in healthy controls. Therefore, we concluded that acupuncture displays more significant effect on neuronal activities of the above brain regions in MCI patients than that in healthy controls. Acupuncture at KI3 exhibits different effects on the neuronal activities of the brain regions from acupuncture at sham acupoint, although the difference is only shown at several regions due to the close distance between the above points.

Heart Rate Variability, Emotions, and Music

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Riganello ◽  
A. Candelieri ◽  
M. Quintieri ◽  
G. Dolce
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Vegetative State ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Heart Beat ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Frequency Spectra ◽  
Emotional Value

The purpose of the study was to identify significant changes in heart rate variability (an emerging descriptor of emotional conditions; HRV) concomitant to complex auditory stimuli with emotional value (music). In healthy controls, traumatic brain injured (TBI) patients, and subjects in the vegetative state (VS) the heart beat was continuously recorded while the subjects were passively listening to each of four music samples of different authorship. The heart rate (parametric and nonparametric) frequency spectra were computed and the spectra descriptors were processed by data-mining procedures. Data-mining sorted the nu_lf (normalized parameter unit of the spectrum low frequency range) as the significant descriptor by which the healthy controls, TBI patients, and VS subjects’ HRV responses to music could be clustered in classes matching those defined by the controls and TBI patients’ subjective reports. These findings promote the potential for HRV to reflect complex emotional stimuli and suggest that residual emotional reactions continue to occur in VS. HRV descriptors and data-mining appear applicable in brain function research in the absence of consciousness.

Adaptive and Maladaptive Neural Plasticity Due to Facial Nerve Palsy

2016 ◽  
Vol 224 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten M. Klingner ◽  
Stefan Brodoehl ◽  
Gerd F. Volk ◽  
Orlando Guntinas-Lichius ◽  
Otto W. Witte
Keyword(s):  
Facial Nerve ◽  
Neural Plasticity ◽  
Cortical Plasticity ◽  
Brain Plasticity ◽  
Motor Nerve ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Cortical Reorganization ◽  
Nerve Lesion ◽  
Peripheral Facial Palsy

Abstract. This paper reviews adaptive and maladaptive mechanisms of cortical plasticity in patients suffering from peripheral facial palsy. As the peripheral facial nerve is a pure motor nerve, a facial nerve lesion is causing an exclusive deefferentation without deafferentation. We focus on the question of how the investigation of pure deefferentation adds to our current understanding of brain plasticity which derives from studies on learning and studies on brain lesions. The importance of efference and afference as drivers for cortical plasticity is discussed in addition to the crossmodal influence of different competitive sensory inputs. We make the attempt to integrate the experimental findings of the effects of pure deefferentation within the theoretical framework of cortical responses and predictive coding. We show that the available experimental data can be explained within this theoretical framework which also clarifies the necessity for maladaptive plasticity. Finally, we propose rehabilitation approaches for directing cortical reorganization in the appropriate direction and highlight some challenging questions that are yet unexplored in the field.

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