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1. Anterior Insular Resting‐State Functional Connectivity is Related to Cognitive Reserve in Multiple Sclerosis

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jon.12779  

   Bizzo, Bernardo Canedo ; Arruda‐Sanchez, Tiago ; Tobyne, Sean M. ; Bireley, John Daniel ; Lev, Michael Howard ; Gasparetto, Emerson Leandro ; Klawiter, Eric C. ( August 2020 , Journal of Neuroimaging)

   Cognitive dysfunction is common in multiple sclerosis (MS). The dorsal anterior insula (dAI) is a key hub of the salience network (SN) orchestrating access to critical cognitive brain regions. The aim of this study was to assess whole‐brain dAI intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) using resting‐state functional MRI (rs‐fMRI) in people with MS and healthy controls (HC) and test the relationship between cognitive reserve (CR) and dAI iFC in people with MS.

   We studied 28 people with relapsing‐remitting MS and 28 HC. CR index was quantified by combining premorbid IQ, leisure activities, and education level. For whole‐brain iFC analyses, the bilateral dAI were used as seeds. Individual subject correlation maps were entered into general linear models for group comparison and to analyze the effect of CR index on dAI iFC, controlling for multiple comparisons. The correlation between CR index and iFC was assessed using a linear regression model.

   rs‐fMRI analyses revealed a negative relationship between CR index and iFC within the left dAI and a left occipital cluster in people with MS including regions of the cuneus, superior occipital gyrus, and parieto‐occipital sulcus. The regression analysis showed that people with MS and a higher CR index had a statistically significantly reduced iFC within the left dAI and the cluster.

   CR is relevant to functional connectivity within one of the main nodes of the SN, the dAI, and occipital regions in MS. These results have implications for how CR may modulate the susceptibility to cognitive dysfunction in MS.

    

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2. Aberrant Dynamic Functional Connectivity of Default Mode Network in Schizophrenia and Links to Symptom Severity

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fncir.2021.649417  

   Sendi, Mohammad S. ; Zendehrouh, Elaheh ; Ellis, Charles A. ; Liang, Zhijia ; Fu, Zening ; Mathalon, Daniel H. ; Ford, Judith M. ; Preda, Adrian ; van Erp, Theo G. ; Miller, Robyn L. ; et al ( March 2021 , Frontiers in Neural Circuits)

   Background: Schizophrenia affects around 1% of the global population. Functional connectivity extracted from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) has previously been used to study schizophrenia and has great potential to provide novel insights into the disorder. Some studies have shown abnormal functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN) of individuals with schizophrenia, and more recent studies have shown abnormal dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) in individuals with schizophrenia. However, DMN dFC and the link between abnormal DMN dFC and symptom severity have not been well-characterized. Method: Resting-state fMRI data from subjects with schizophrenia (SZ) and healthy controls (HC) across two datasets were analyzed independently. We captured seven maximally independent subnodes in the DMN by applying group independent component analysis and estimated dFC between subnode time courses using a sliding window approach. A clustering method separated the dFCs into five reoccurring brain states. A feature selection method modeled the difference between SZs and HCs using the state-specific FC features. Finally, we used the transition probability of a hidden Markov model to characterize the link between symptom severity and dFC in SZ subjects. Results: We found decreases in the connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and increases in the connectivity between the precuneus (PCu) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) (i.e., PCu/PCC) of SZ subjects. In SZ, the transition probability from a state with weaker PCu/PCC and stronger ACC connectivity to a state with stronger PCu/PCC and weaker ACC connectivity increased with symptom severity. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this was the first study to investigate DMN dFC and its link to schizophrenia symptom severity. We identified reproducible neural states in a data-driven manner and demonstrated that the strength of connectivity within those states differed between SZs and HCs. Additionally, we identified a relationship between SZ symptom severity and the dynamics of DMN functional connectivity. We validated our results across two datasets. These results support the potential of dFC for use as a biomarker of schizophrenia and shed new light upon the relationship between schizophrenia and DMN dynamics. 

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3. Neural Correlates of Audiovisual Temporal Binding Window in Individuals With Schizotypal and Autistic Traits: Evidence From Resting‐State Functional Connectivity

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2456  

   Zhou, Han‐yu ; Wang, Yong‐ming ; Zhang, Rui‐ting ; Cheung, Eric F. C. ; Pantelis, Christos ; Chan, Raymond C. K. ( December 2020 , Autism Research)

   Temporal proximity is an important clue for multisensory integration. Previous evidence indicates that individuals with autism and schizophrenia are more likely to integrate multisensory inputs over a longer temporal binding window (TBW). However, whether such deficits in audiovisual temporal integration extend to subclinical populations with high schizotypal and autistic traits are unclear. Using audiovisual simultaneity judgment (SJ) tasks for nonspeech and speech stimuli, our results suggested that the width of the audiovisual TBW was not significantly correlated with self‐reported schizotypal and autistic traits in a group of young adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) resting‐state activity was also acquired to explore the neural correlates underlying inter‐individual variability of TBW width. Across the entire sample, stronger resting‐state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the left superior temporal cortex and the left precuneus, and weaker rsFC between the left cerebellum and the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex were correlated with a narrower TBW for speech stimuli. Meanwhile, stronger rsFC between the left anterior superior temporal gyrus and the right inferior temporal gyrus was correlated with a wider audiovisual TBW for non‐speech stimuli. The TBW‐related rsFC was not affected by levels of subclinical traits. In conclusion, this study indicates that audiovisual temporal processing may not be affected by autistic and schizotypal traits and rsFC between brain regions responding to multisensory information and timing may account for the inter‐individual difference in TBW width.

   Individuals with ASD and schizophrenia are more likely to perceive asynchronous auditory and visual events as occurring simultaneously even if they are well separated in time. We investigated whether similar difficulties in audiovisual temporal processing were present in subclinical populations with high autistic and schizotypal traits. We found that the ability to detect audiovisual asynchrony was not affected by different levels of autistic and schizotypal traits. We also found that connectivity of some brain regions engaging in multisensory and timing tasks might explain an individual's tendency to bind multisensory information within a wide or narrow time window.Autism Res2021, 14: 668–680. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC

    

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4. Functional brain rewiring and altered cortical stability in ulcerative colitis

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-021-01421-6  

   Wang, Hao ; Labus, Jennifer S. ; Griffin, Fiona ; Gupta, Arpana ; Bhatt, Ravi R. ; Sauk, Jenny S. ; Turkiewicz, Joanna ; Bernstein, Charles N. ; Kornelsen, Jennifer ; Mayer, Emeran A. ( January 2022 , Molecular Psychiatry)

   Despite recent advances, there is still a major need to better understand the interactions between brain function and chronic gut inflammation and its clinical implications. Alterations in executive function have previously been identified in several chronic inflammatory conditions, including inflammatory bowel diseases. Inflammation-associated brain alterations can be captured by connectome analysis. Here, we used the resting-state fMRI data from 222 participants comprising three groups (ulcerative colitis (UC), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and healthy controls (HC),N = 74 each) to investigate the alterations in functional brain wiring and cortical stability in UC compared to the two control groups and identify possible correlations of these alterations with clinical parameters. Globally, UC participants showed increased functional connectivity and decreased modularity compared to IBS and HC groups. Regionally, UC showed decreased eigenvector centrality in the executive control network (UC < IBS < HC) and increased eigenvector centrality in the visual network (UC > IBS > HC). UC also showed increased connectivity in dorsal attention, somatomotor network, and visual networks, and these enhanced subnetwork connectivities were able to distinguish UC participants from HCs and IBS with high accuracy. Dynamic functional connectome analysis revealed that UC showed enhanced cortical stability in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which correlated with severe depression and anxiety-related measures. None of the observed brain changes were correlated with disease duration. Together, these findings are consistent with compromised functioning of networks involved in executive function and sensory integration in UC.

    

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5. Cerebro-cerebellar functional neuroplasticity mediates the effect of electric field on electroconvulsive therapy outcomes

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-023-02312-w  

   Fu, Zening ; Abbott, Christopher C. ; Miller, Jeremy ; Deng, Zhi-De ; McClintock, Shawn M. ; Sendi, Mohammad S. E. ; Sui, Jing ; Calhoun, Vince D. ( February 2023 , Translational Psychiatry)

   Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the most effective treatment for severe depression and works by applying an electric current through the brain. The applied current generates an electric field (E-field) and seizure activity, changing the brain’s functional organization. The E-field, which is determined by electrode placement (right unilateral or bitemporal) and pulse amplitude (600, 700, or 800 milliamperes), is associated with the ECT response. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between E-field, functional brain changes, and clinical outcomes of ECT are not well understood. Here, we investigated the relationships between whole-brain E-field (E_brain, the 90^thpercentile of E-field magnitude in the brain), cerebro-cerebellar functional network connectivity (FNC), and clinical outcomes (cognitive performance and depression severity). A fully automated independent component analysis framework determined the FNC between the cerebro-cerebellar networks. We found a linear relationship between E_brainand cognitive outcomes. The mediation analysis showed that the cerebellum to middle occipital gyrus (MOG)/posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) FNC mediated the effects of E_brainon cognitive performance. In addition, there is a mediation effect through the cerebellum to parietal lobule FNC between E_brainand antidepressant outcomes. The pair-wise t-tests further demonstrated that a larger E_brainwas associated with increased FNC between cerebellum and MOG and decreased FNC between cerebellum and PCC, which were linked with decreased cognitive performance. This study implies that an optimal E-field balancing the antidepressant and cognitive outcomes should be considered in relation to cerebro-cerebellar functional neuroplasticity.

    

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