Brain Functional Plasticity Driven by Career Experience: A Resting-State fMRI Study of the Seafarer

Abstract

The functional connectome derived from BOLD resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data represents meaningful functional organizations and a shift between distinct cognitive states. However, the body of knowledge on how the long-term career experience affects the brain’s functional plasticity is still very limited. In this study, we used a dynamic functional connectome characterization (DBFCC) model with the automatic target generation process K-Means clustering to explore the functional reorganization property of resting brain states, driven by long-term career experience. Taking sailors as an example, DBFCC generated seventeen reproducibly common atomic connectome patterns (ACP) and one reproducibly distinct ACP, i.e., ACP14. The common ACPs indicating the same functional topology of the resting brain state transitions were shared by two control groups, while the distinct ACP, which mainly represented functional plasticity and only existed in the sailors, showed close relationships with the long-term career experience of sailors. More specifically, the distinct ACP14 of the sailors was made up of four specific sub-networks, such as the auditory network, visual network, executive control network, and vestibular function-related network, which were most likely linked to sailing experience, i.e., continuously suffering auditory noise, maintaining balance, locating one’s position in three-dimensional space at sea, obeying orders, etc. Our results demonstrated DBFCC’s effectiveness in revealing the specifically functional alterations modulated by sailing experience and particularly provided the evidence that functional plasticity was beneficial in reorganizing brain’s functional topology, which could be driven by career experience.

Occupational functional plasticity revealed by brain entropy: A resting‐state fMRI study of seafarers

“…The specific scan parameters were as follows: GE 3.0 T using a gradient echo EPI, a total of 36 slices covering the whole‐brain area, 160 time points, TR (time of repetition) = 2 s, matrix size = 64 × 64, in‐plane resolution = 3.75 mm × 3.75 mm, and slice thickness = 4 mm. This dataset was also reported in our previous research (Wang et al, ).…”

“…The superior temporal gyrus is an essential structure involved in auditory processing, as well as the function of hearing, speech, language (Bigler et al, ; Howard et al, ; Tang, Hamilton, & Chang, ), and integration of multimodal sensory input (Barraclough, Xiao, Baker, Oram, & Perrett, ). Thus, we inferred that the increase in brain entropy in the superior temporal gyrus of the seafarer was possibly due to the marine working environment, which has continuous machine noise, the monotonous loud sound of surf, and the less communicative community of single‐sex colleagues (Wang, ; Wang et al, ). Furthermore, previous studies have demonstrated that the orbito‐frontal gyrus plays a key role in the regulation of the peripheral physiological response during emotional experiences (Barbas, ; Barrett, Mesquita, Ochsner, & Gross, ; Bechara, Damasio, & Damasio, ; Bishop, Duncan, Brett, & Lawrence, ; Kim, Gee, Loucks, Davis, & Whalen, ; Meyers, Berman, Scheibel, & Hayman, ; Ohira et al, ) and in the planning behaviors associated with reward and punishment (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, ; Wei et al, ).…”

“…Recently, many studies have shown that there is a significant correlation between the brain's structural/functional plasticity and people's occupations. Many occupations were studied including musicians, expert athletes, acupuncturists, simultaneous interpreters, taxi drivers, professional sailors, and so on (Dong et al, ; Hervais‐Adelman, Moser‐Mercer, Michel, & Golestani, ; Park et al, ; Schlaug, Jäncke, Huang, Staiger, & Steinmetz, ; Shen et al, ; Wang et al, ; Wei, Zhang, Jiang, & Luo, ; Yang et al, ).…”

“…These include being exposed to the marine working environment (small working space with high levels of machine noise), single‐sex colleagues (all male sailors), and long periods of isolation from their families. Additionally, this job requires professional maritime training and skills, good psychological health, strong environmental adaptability, ability to follow a chain of command strongly, and so on (Wang et al, ). Due to the stability and particularity of a sailor's occupation, we speculate that the long‐term sailing experience and career training of seafarers alters the brain complexity in some brain regions; such an outcome could help to characterize the intrinsic neural substrates of career experience.…”

“…To maintain its normal operation, it is extremely necessary to maintain the brain entropy in a certain range (Bergstr€ om, 1969;Singer, 2009;Wang, Li, Childress, & Detre, 2014). Many factors contribute to the changes in the complexity of the system, such as age, sex, diseases, and occupations (Drachman, 2006;Gao, Zeng, Wang, Shi, & Chen, 2016;Hervais-Adelman et al, 2015;Li, Fang, Hager, Rao, & Wang, 2016;Shen et al, 2016;Sokunbi et al, 2011Sokunbi et al, , 2013Sokunbi et al, , 2015Sokunbi, 2014;Wang, 2016;Wang, Zeng, Shi, & Yan, 2017;Yang, Hou, Lu, Luo, & Yao, 2016;Zeng, Wang, Shi, & Yan, 2016). Recently, the sample entropy (SampEn) as a representative has been widely used to characterize the alteration of brain function with single-scale and multi-scale biological signals using EEG (Ab asolo, Hornero, Espino, Alvarez, & Poza, 2006), MEG (G omez and Hornero, 2010), and fMRI (Wang et al, 2014;Sokunbi, 2014;Sokunbi et al, 2015).…”