Amblyopia is a visual development deficit caused by abnormal visual experience in early life, mainly manifesting as defected visual acuity and binocular visual impairment, which is considered to reflect abnormal development of the brain rather than organic lesions of the eye. Previous studies have reported abnormal spontaneous brain activity in patients with amblyopia. However, the location of abnormal spontaneous activity in patients with amblyopia and the association between abnormal brain function activity and clinical deficits remain unclear. The purpose of this study is to analyze spontaneous brain functional activity abnormalities in patients with amblyopia and their associations with clinical defects using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. In this study, 31 patients with amblyopia and 31 healthy controls were enrolled for resting-state fMRI scanning. The results showed that spontaneous activity in the right angular gyrus, left posterior cerebellum, and left cingulate gyrus were significantly lower in patients with amblyopia than in controls, and spontaneous activity in the right middle temporal gyrus was significantly higher in patients with amblyopia. In addition, the spontaneous activity of the left cerebellum in patients with amblyopia was negatively associated with the best-corrected visual acuity of the amblyopic eye, and the spontaneous activity of the right middle temporal gyrus was positively associated with the stereoacuity. This study found that adult patients with amblyopia showed abnormal spontaneous activity in the angular gyrus, cerebellum, middle temporal gyrus, and cingulate gyrus. Furthermore, the functional abnormalities in the cerebellum and middle temporal gyrus may be associated with visual acuity defects and stereopsis deficiency in patients with amblyopia. These findings help explain the neural mechanism of amblyopia, thus promoting the improvement of the treatment strategy for amblyopia.
We investigated the baseline brain activity level in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) by amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) based on resting-state functional MRI (fMRI). We examined 13 patients in the MDD group and 14 healthy volunteers in the control group by resting-state fMRI on GE Signa 3.0T. We calculated and compared the ALFF values of the two groups. In the MDD group, ALFF values in the right medial prefrontal were higher than those in control group, with statistically significant differences (P<0.001). ALFF values in the left parietal in the MDD group were lower than those in control group with statistically significant differences (P<0.001). This resting-state fMRI study suggested that the alteration brain activity in the right medial prefrontal and left parietal ALFF contributed to the understanding of the pathophysiological mechanism of MDD patients.
ObjectiveAimed to investigate the local neural activity and functional connectivity (FC) in the whole brain of cerebellum by fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) and seed-based FC in right temporal lobe epilepsy (rTLE) patients with different level of executive function. Methods20 healthy controls (HC), 18 rTLE patients with executive nonimpairment (ENI) and 20 rTLE patients with executive impairment (EI) were enrolled. The resting-functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data of every participant was collected. The local neural activity in the cerebellum was analyzed by fALFF; the cerebral regions with significant zfALFF values among groups were selected as seeds for subsequent FC analyses in the whole brain. ResultsThe fALFF analysis showed that the significantly differential cerebellar regions were located in right cerebellum lobule VIII and left cerebellum lobule VI. Compared with the HC group, the neural functional activity of right cerebellum lobule VIII was increased in the NEI-rTLE and EI-rTLE groups, but no difference between the patient groups. Compared with the HC group, the functional activity of left cerebellum lobule VI was increased in the ENI-rTLE group, decreased in the EI-rTLE group. The further FC analysis showed altered FCs between right cerebellum lobule VIII and right cerebellum lobule IX, right inferior orbitofrontal gyrus, right middle forbitorontal gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus, left middle frontal gyrus and left inferior parietal gyrus, which were increased in the ENI-rTLE patient group while increased and decreased in the EI-rTLE group. ConclusionThe rTLE patients showed that functional activity of cerebellum in the local and whole brain were reorganized, and the cerebellum exerted compensatory and decompensated role in the process of cognitive impairment.