Reduction of Interhemispheric Functional Brain Connectivity in Early Blindness: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Hou, Fen; Liu, Xia; Zhou, Zhifeng; Zhou, Jingyi; Hengguo, Li

doi:10.1155/2017/6756927

Cited by 25 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Although we do not claim that a lifelong lack of olfactory input has absolutely no effect on the connectivity of the olfactory cortex, our results do imply that even if atypical connectivity (between or within olfactory regions) not detectable here exists in individuals with ICA, these potential alterations are far from the magnitude of those demonstrated in visual cortex of blind individuals where connectivity alterations are clearly detectable using ROI-to-ROI functional connectivity (Bauer et al 2017), regional homogeneity (A. Liu et al 2011), and homotopic connectivity (Watkins et al 2012;Hou et al 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 42%

“…Results from developmental studies (Zuo et al 2010;Anderson et al 2014) and studies investigating functional connectivity in visual sensory deprivation (A. Liu et al 2011;Hou et al 2017;Watkins et al 2012) suggest that higher homogeneity and lower homotopic connectivity would be expected in sensory processing regions lacking sensory input from birth. In contrast to these expectations, our results indicate that neither the regional homogeneity, nor the voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity, in primary olfactory cortex is affected by the lack of olfactory input in individuals with ICA.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, the visual cortex of blind individuals shows a higher regional homogeneity of the BOLD signal at rest (A. Liu et al 2011), i.e., a higher similarity of BOLD signal in neighboring voxels, as well as a lower homotopic connectivity (Watkins et al 2012;Hou et al 2017), in other words a lower interhemispheric functional connectivity, as compared to controls. Because regional homogeneity typically decreases and homotopic connectivity typically increases in sensory processing areas during normal development (Zuo et al 2010;Anderson et al 2014), these anomalies in blind individuals suggest that sensory input might drive the development and preservation of functional connectivity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Normal Olfactory Functional Connectivity Despite Life-Long Absence of Olfactory Experiences

Peter

Fransson

Mårtensson

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Congenital blindness is associated with atypical morphology, and functional connectivity within and from, visual cortical regions; changes that are hypothesized to originate from a life-long absence of visual input and could be regarded as a general (re)organization principle of sensory cortices. Challenging this is the fact that individuals with congenital anosmia (life-long olfactory sensory loss) display little to no morphological changes in primary olfactory cortex. To determine whether olfactory input from birth is essential to establish and maintain normal functional connectivity in olfactory processing regions, akin to the visual system, we assessed differences in functional connectivity within olfactory cortex between individuals with congenital anosmia (n=33) and matched controls (n=34). Specifically, we assessed differences in connectivity between core olfactory processing regions as well as differences in regional homogeneity and homotopic connectivity within primary olfactory cortex. In contrast to congenital blindness, none of the analyses indicated atypical connectivity in individuals with congenital anosmia. In fact, post-hoc Bayesian analysis provided support for an absence of group differences. These results suggest that a lifelong absence of olfactory experience has limited impact on the functional connectivity in olfactory cortex, a finding that indicates a clear difference between sensory modalities in how sensory cortical regions develop.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 42%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Normal Olfactory Functional Connectivity Despite Life-Long Absence of Olfactory Experiences

Peter

Fransson

Mårtensson

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…The individual z-maps were entered into a random effect two-sample t -test with the global VMHC as covariate in a voxel-wise manner to identify the difference in VMHC between two groups (FDR corrected, P < 0.05 and cluster>20). More details were shown in a previous study [ 48 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative study of interhemispheric functional connectivity in left eye monocular blindness versus right eye monocular blindness: a resting-state functional MRI study

et al. 2018

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ObjectiveIn the present study, we investigated the brain interhemispheric functional connectivity changes in left eye MB versus right eye MB patients by voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) methods.MethodsA total of 31 patients with MB (15 with left eye MB and 16 with right eye MB), and 31 healthy controls (HCs) closely matched for age were recruited. All subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) examinations. The VMHC method was used to evaluate directly functional interactions between the hemispheres. A one-way ANOVA was performed to determine the regions in which the VMHC differs between the three groups. Patients with MB were distinguished from HCs by a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The relationships between the mean VMHC signal values in many brain regions and clinical features in MB patients were calculated by pearson correlation analysis.ResultsCompared with HCs, MB patients had significantly decreased VMHC values in the cuneus/calcarine/lingual gyrus. Furthermore, left eye MB showed decreased VMHC values in the cuneus/calcarine/lingual gyrus and showed increased VMHC values in the insula and middle frontal gyrus compared with HC. In addition, right eye MB showed decreased VMHC values in the cuneus/calcarine/lingual gyrus, primary motor cortex (M1)/primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and superior parietal lobule.ConclusionMB subjects showed abnormal brain interhemispheric functional connectivity in visual pathways. Furthermore, different patterns of brain interhemispheric functional connectivity occurred in the left eye and right eye MB. These VMHC values provide much useful information to explain the neural mechanism changes in MB.

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“…RP patients also had considerably lower regional homogeneity values in the bilateral lingual gyrus/cerebellum posterior lobe [ 44 ]. Hou et al found that blind patients showed reduced voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity in the primary visual cortex and visual association cortex, compared with SCs [ 45 ]. Qin et al, meanwhile, demonstrated that patients with congenital blindness (CB) and late blindness (LB) had reduced short- and long-range functional connectivity density in the primary visual cortex relative to the SC group [ 46 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered Temporal Dynamic Intrinsic Brain Activity in Late Blindness

Huang

Wen

et al. 2020

BioMed Research International

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Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that visual deprivation triggers significant crossmodal plasticity in the functional and structural architecture of the brain. However, prior neuroimaging studies focused on the static brain activity in blindness. It remains unknown whether alterations of dynamic intrinsic brain activity occur in late blindness (LB). This study investigated dynamic intrinsic brain activity changes in individuals with late blindness by assessing the dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (dALFFs) using sliding-window analyses. Forty-one cases of late blindness (LB) (29 males and 12 females, mean age: 39.70±12.66 years) and 48 sighted controls (SCs) (17 males and 31 females, mean age: 43.23±13.40 years) closely matched in age, sex, and education level were enrolled in this study. The dALFF with sliding-window analyses was used to compare the difference in dynamic intrinsic brain activity between the two groups. Compared with SCs, individuals with LB exhibited significantly lower dALFF values in the bilateral lingual gyrus (LING)/calcarine (CAL) and left thalamus (THA). LB cases also showed considerably decreased dFC values between the bilateral LING/CAL and the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and between the left THA and the right LING/cerebelum_6 (CER) (two-tailed, voxel-level P<0.01, Gaussian random field (GRF) correction, cluster-level P<0.05). Our study demonstrated that LB individuals showed lower-temporal variability of dALFF in the visual cortices and thalamus, suggesting lower flexibility of visual thalamocortical activity, which might reflect impaired visual processing in LB individuals. These findings indicate that abnormal dynamic intrinsic brain activity might be involved in the neurophysiological mechanisms of LB.

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Reduction of Interhemispheric Functional Brain Connectivity in Early Blindness: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Cited by 25 publications

References 36 publications

Normal Olfactory Functional Connectivity Despite Life-Long Absence of Olfactory Experiences

Normal Olfactory Functional Connectivity Despite Life-Long Absence of Olfactory Experiences

Comparative study of interhemispheric functional connectivity in left eye monocular blindness versus right eye monocular blindness: a resting-state functional MRI study

Altered Temporal Dynamic Intrinsic Brain Activity in Late Blindness

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