Resting state connectivity differences in eyes open versus eyes closed conditions

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging data are commonly collected during the resting state. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs‐fMRI) is very practical and applicable for a wide range of study populations. Rs‐fMRI is usually collected in at least one of three different conditions/tasks, eyes closed (EC), eyes open (EO), or eyes fixated on an object (EO‐F). Several studies have shown that there are significant condition‐related differences in the acquired data. In this study, we compared the functional network connectivity (FNC) differences assessed via group independent component analysis on a large rs‐fMRI dataset collected in both EC and EO‐F conditions, and also investigated the effect of covariates (e.g., age, gender, and social status score). Our results indicated that task condition significantly affected a wide range of networks; connectivity of visual networks to themselves and other networks was increased during EO‐F, while EC was associated with increased connectivity of auditory and sensorimotor networks to other networks. In addition, the association of FNC with age, gender, and social status was observed to be significant only in the EO‐F condition (though limited as well). However, statistical analysis did not reveal any significant effect of interaction between eyes status and covariates. These results indicate that resting‐state condition is an important variable that may limit the generalizability of clinical findings using rs‐fMRI.

Influences of affective context on amygdala functional connectivity during cognitive control from adolescence through adulthood

“…Incorporating novel methods for reducing in-scanner motion will be crucial in future studies to allow for longer scan times in developmental populations. In addition, past work has found that age-related differences in functional connectivity are only observable in resting state collected with eyes open or fixation, but not with eyes closed, as is the case in this study ( Agcaoglu et al, 2019 ). However, the fact that the resting state results were replicated in the PNC resting state data, which is collected with eyes open, likely mitigates this issue.…”

Frontoparietal structural properties mediate adult life span differences in executive function

“…The entire scanning session lasted for 8 minutes. This procedure reflects recent evidence 70 showing that eyes open and fixated produce more reliable results for controlling experimental variability across participants.…”

Autonomic responses to emotional linguistic stimuli and amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations predict outcome after severe brain injury

“…Although the eyes-closed resting condition can lead to participants falling asleep during scanning and to more variability among responses ( Agcaoglu et al, 2019 , Patriat et al, 2013 , Tagliazucchi and Laufs, 2014 ), this choice was driven by methodological considerations. Firstly, DOC patients at the acute stage very rarely present with spontaneous eye-opening.…”

“…As detailed in the methodology section, we asked the participants to keep their eyes closed to mitigate, as much as possible, potential confounding effects associated with the clinical characteristics of the sample of patients, such as the inability of acute patients to keep their eyes open for 10 min. Nevertheless, we acknowledge that the eye-closed condition may lead some participants to fall asleep during the scanning session, causing a higher variability of the responses ( Agcaoglu et al, 2019 , Patriat et al, 2013 , Tagliazucchi and Laufs, 2014 ). To control for this risk, we interviewed healthy participants after each resting-state fMRI session about their state of wakefulness.…”