Evidence of cortical thickness reduction and disconnection in high myopia

Abstract

High myopia (HM) is associated with impaired long-distance vision. accumulating evidences reported that abnormal visual experience leads to dysfunction in brain activity in HM even corrected. However, whether the long-term of abnormal visual experience lead to neuroanatomical changes remain unknown, the aim at this study is to investigate the alternation of cortical surface thickness in HM patients. 82 patients with HM (HM groups), 57 healthy controls (HC groups) were recruited. All participants underwent high-resolution T1 and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. The cortical thickness analysis was preformed to investigate the neuroanatomical changes in HM patients using computational anatomy toolbox (CAT 12) toolbox. Compare with HCs, HM patients showed decreased the cortical surface thickness in the left middle occipital gyrus (MOG), left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), right precuneus, right primary visual area 1 (V1), right superior temporal gyrus (STG), right superior parietal lobule (SPL), right occipital pole, and right the primary motor cortex (M1), and increased to the parietal operculum (OP4) (P < 0.01, FWE-corrected), the mean cortical thickness of right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and right subcallosal cortex showed negatively correlation between clinical variables (axis length (ALM), the average macular thickness (AMT), keratometer (KER) 1, KER2, the mean KER, the mean macular fovea thickness (MFK), the refractive diopter) in HM patients. Our result mainly provided an evidence of cortical thickness reduction and disconnection in visual center and visual processing area, and cortical thickness increase in left multimodal integration region in HM patients. This may provide important significance of the study of the neural mechanism of HM.

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“…Recently, Wai, et al [33] reported a relationship between visual function and deep retinal perfusion density as measured by microperimetry and OCTA respectively, suggesting that these parameters may serve as early indicators of structural and functional abnormalities in highly myopic eyes with myopic macular degeneration (MMD). Published neurological and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have previously identified functional alterations across multiple cortical layers in brains of patients with highly myopic eyes [34]. In the future, we plan to investigate the structural and functional postoperative findings in surgically resolved myopic FRD to test whether this macular pathology further leads to the aggravation of cortical surface thickness and related functional connectivity in MMD patients.…”

Meridional Anisotropy of Foveal and Peripheral Resolution Acuity in Adults With Emmetropia, Myopia, and Astigmatism

“…2 b & c) fell within the range for resolution acuity at or close to 15° eccentricity of peripheral visual field ranges from 2.5 to 12 arcmin reported by previous studies. 20 , 36 , 37 The wide variations in measured peripheral resolution acuity obtained by previous studies could be attributable to the differences in psychophysical methods (method of adjustment, 20 2-up 1-down staircase, 33 and 1-up 1-down staircase 34 ), tested visual field locations, and participants’ refractive errors. Third, this study measured resolution acuity rather than detection acuity (i.e., identifying the presence or absence of gratings), even though the latter is also a common spatial acuity parameter.…”

“…31 Furthermore, recent studies have also revealed functional connectivity and morphological changes in the brains of high myopes, even though their best-corrected distance visual acuity was normal. [32][33][34] To remove the potential contribution of myopia to meridional anisotropy at peripheral visual fields, participants with emmetropia were recruited as a control group. However, no significant difference in the meridional anisotropy between the SM and EM groups was observed across all tested retinal locations.…”

Disrupted Topological Organization of Resting-State Functional Brain Networks in Age-Related Hearing Loss

“…The occipital lobe not only plays an important role in integrating information of visual sense, auditory sense, and other information gathered by sensory systems but also connects visual information with brain processing systems of speech and other executive functions (Wu et al, 2020 ). The parietal lobe is essential to process sensory information, including integration, perception, digital cognition, speech understanding, decision-making, and spatial consciousness (Critchleey, 1953 ; Bisley and Goldberg, 2010 ).…”