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The “hunger” hormone ghrelin regulates food-intake and preference for high-calorie (HC) food through modulation of the mesocortico-limbic dopaminergic pathway. Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) is an effective bariatric surgery to treat morbid obesity. We tested the hypothesis that LSG-induced reductions in appetite and total ghrelin levels in blood are associated with reduced prefrontal brain reactivity to food cues. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) cue-reactivity task with HC and low-calorie (LC) food pictures was used to investigate brain reactivity in 22 obese participants tested before and one month after bariatric surgery (BS). Nineteen obese controls (Ctr) without surgery were also tested at baseline and one-month later. LSG significantly decreased (1) fasting plasma concentrations of total ghrelin, leptin and insulin, (2) craving for HC food, and (3) brain activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in response to HC vs. LC food cues (P(FWE) < 0.05). LSG-induced reduction in DLPFC activation to food cues were positively correlated with reduction in ghrelin levels and reduction in craving ratings for food. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) connectivity analyses showed that the right DLPFC had stronger connectivity with the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC) after LSG; and changes in BMI were negatively correlated with changes in connectivity between the right DLPFC and vACC in the LSG group only. These findings suggest that LSG-induced weight-loss may be related to reductions in ghrelin, possibly leading to decreased food craving and hypothetically reducing DLPFC response to the HC food cues.

Depression and obesity have high concurrence within individuals, which may be explained by sharing the same risk factors, including disruption of the intestinal microbiota. However, evidence that delineated the causal connections is extremely scarce. Methods: Mice lacking fat mass- and obesity-associated gene (Fto) were generated. Fto-deficient and wild-type control mice were subjected to novel conditions with or without chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) for 6 weeks. Some mice were treated with antibiotics via their drinking water for 6 weeks in order to deplete their microbiota. Behavioral tests were performed to evaluate anxiety- and depression-like behaviors. 16S rRNA amplicon and metagenomic sequencing were employed to analyse fecal microbiota. Plasma levels of inflammatory cytokines and lipopolysaccharides (LPS) were also compared. Results: Deletion of Fto led to lower body weight and decreased anxiety- and depression-like behaviors, Fto+/- mice were also less susceptible to stress stimulation, highlighting the essential role of Fto in pathogenesis of depression. With regard to gut microbiota, Fto deficiency mice harbored specific bacterial signature of suppressing inflammation, characterized with higher abundance of Lactobacillus, lower Porphyromonadaceae and Helicobacter. Critically, behavioral alterations of Fto+/- mice are mediated by shift in gut microbiota, as such changes can be partially attenuated using antibiotics. Exposure to CUMS increased serum IL-6 level while Fto deficiency reduced its level, which may be explained by a lower LPS concentration. Conclusion: Together, our findings uncover the roles of Fto on depression and provide insights into microbiota-related biological mechanisms underlying the association between obesity and depression.

The present study aimed to assess the efficacy of Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) real-time neurofeedback (NF) vs. atomoxetine (AT) in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A parallel-group study was conducted to enroll children with ADHD between 8 and 12 years of age. Participants were assigned into the NIRS group and AT group as their wish. Subjects in the NIRS group received 12 sessions of NF training within 6 weeks, and subjects in the AT group were given oral medication. Changes in Swanson, Nolan, and Pelham-V rating scales (SNAP-IV), and performance of Go/No-Go and N-back working memory tasks at week 3, 6 and 8 were evaluated. Forty-nine patients completed the study, including 18 ADHD in the NIRS group and 31 in the AT group. Total scores of SNAP-IV significantly decreased from baseline to week 3, week 6, and week 8 in both groups. Patients in the NIRS group showed significant lower scores on the inattention subscale of SNAP-IV at week 3 and week 6, compared to the AT group. NIRS group had a shorter reaction time during the Go/No-Go task at week 6 and fewer errors during 2-back than the AT group at week 3. The findings revealed that NIRS real-time NF is more efficacious relative to AT in improving behavioral performance, highlighting its potential role and advantages in treating patients with ADHD.

Background/Study Concept: Acute lacunar stroke (Als) plays a role in death/disability worldwide. Aphasia refers to chronic difficulty with communication in >20% of patients post stroke. We describe pathophysiological features of white matter (WM) abnormalities and their relationship between WM changes and aphasia quotient (AQ) scores in Als.Methods: Diffusion tensor imaging data were acquired in 37 Als patients and 28 healthy controls. Tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) and correlation analyses were used.Results: Consistent with the hypothesis, Als had decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) and increased mean diffusivity, axial diffusivity and radial diffusivity in the genu, body and splenium of the corpus callosum (CC), superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) and corona radiata in the bilateral hemisphere. Reduced FA of SLF was correlated with AQ scores in Als patients.Conclusion: It is hoped that TBSS could shed new insights into aphasia mechanisms in Als to help promote aging-related disease studies.

Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) is an effective bariatric surgery to treat obesity, and involves removal of the gastric fundus where ghrelin is mainly produced. Ghrelin stimulates appetite and regulates food intake through its effect on the hypothalamus and hippocampus (HIPP). While ghrelin’s role on the hypothalamus has been explored, little is known about its role on HIPP. We tested the hypothesis that LSG-induced reductions in ghrelin levels would be associated with changes in HIPP activity. Brain activity was measured with amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) captured with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 30 obese participants, both before and after 1-month of LSG, and in 26 obese controls without surgery that were studied at baseline and 1-month later. A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to model the group and time effects on ALFF and resting-state functional connectivity. One-month post-LSG there were significant decreases in appetite, body mass index (BMI), fasting plasma ghrelin and leptin levels, anxiety, and ALFF in HIPP and ALFF increases in posterior cingulate cortex (PCC, PFWE

Purpose: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered to be the clinical transition stage between patients with cognitively intact geriatrics and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). When observed longitudinally, however, a certain proportion of patients with MCI are expected to revert to a cognitively intact state (MCI_R) while others either remain in the MCI state (MCI_S) or deteriorate into AD (MCI_P). It is worthwhile to investigate the divergence in the brain activities of these MCI groups with different post hoc labels. Methods: In this study, we employed the regional homogeneity (ReHo) measure to explore the characteristics of local brain activity in these MCI groups. Results: Compared to age-matched normal controls, our results exhibited that (1) in MCI_R group, ReHo index showed an increase in the left insula and a decrease in the left superior temporal gyrus; (2) in MCI_S group, ReHo index increased in the left orbital part of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG_orb) and decreased in the left inferior parietal lobe; and (3) in MCI_P group, ReHo index elevated in the left IFG_orb and decreased in the left putamen. Conclusions: The distinct ReHo changes in the individual MCI groups indicated a potential evidence for differentially active interventions for a specific patient with MCI.

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a genetic imprinting disorder that is mainly characterized by hyperphagia and childhood obesity. Previous neuroimaging studies revealed that there is a significant difference in brain activation patterns between obese children with and without PWS. However, whether there are differences in the brain structure of obese children with and without PWS remains elusive. In the current study, we used T1-weighted and diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging to investigate alterations in the brain structure, such as the cortical volume and white matter integrity, in relation to this eating disorder in 12 children with PWS, 18 obese children without PWS (OB) and 18 healthy controls. Compared with the controls, both the PWS and OB groups exhibited alterations in cortical volume, with similar deficit patterns in 10 co-varying brain regions in the bilateral dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortices, right anterior cingulate cortex, and bilateral temporal lobe. The white matter integrities of the above regions were then examined with an analysis method based on probabilistic tractography. The PWS group exhibited distinct changes in the reduced fractional anisotropy of white matter fibers connected to the co-varying regions, whereas the OB group did not. Our findings indicated that PWS and OB share similar gray matter alterations that are responsible for the development of eating disorders. Additionally, the distinct white matter alterations might explain the symptoms associated with food intake in PWS, including excessive hyperphagia and constant hunger. Hum Brain Mapp, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Electroacupuncture (EA) is a safe method for treating obesity; however, its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. We employed resting-state-functional-magnetic-resonance-imaging (RS-fMRI) and amplitude-of-low-frequency-fluctuation (ALFF) to investigate acute/long-term effects of EA on brain activity and resting-state-functional-connectivity (RSFC) in overweight/obesity subjects who received real/Sham stimulation. For acute effects, 26 and 19 overweight/obesity subjects were included in EA and Sham groups respectively. There were significant time effects on ALFF in the right insula (INS) and left dorsolateral-prefrontal-cortex (DLPFC) due to decreases/increases in INS/DLPFC in both groups. There were weaker positive RSFC between INS and supplementary-motor-area (SMA)/right DLPFC and weaker negative RSFC between INS and precuneus (PCUN); stronger negative RSFC between DLPFC and dorsomedial-prefrontal-cortex (DMPFC) in both groups. For long-term study, body-mass-index (BMI) had significant reduction in EA (n = 17) and Sham (15) groups; EA had higher BMI reduction than in Sham. There were significant time effects on ALFF in right ventrolateral-prefrontal-cortex (VLPFC) due to significant increases in EA group, and stronger positive RSFC between VLPFC and orbitofrontal-cortex and negative RSFC between VLPFC and left thalamus (THA) in both groups after long-term treatment. These findings suggest that changes in resting-activity and RSFC implicated in inhibitory-control, gastric-motility and satiety-control are associated with EA-induced weight-loss.

BACKGROUND: Obesity is associated with decreased brain gray- (GM)/white-matter (WM) volumes in regions. Laparoscopic-sleeve-gastrectomy (LSG) is an effective bariatric surgery associated with neuroplastic changes in patients with obesity at 1-month-post-LSG. OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether LSG can induce sustained neuroplastic recovery of brain structural abnormalities, and whether structural changes are accompanied by functional alterations. SETTING: University hospital, longitudinal study. METHODS: Structural MRI/voxel-based morphometry-analysis were employed to assess GM/WM volumes in 30 obese participants at pre-LSG, 1-/3-month-post-LSG. One-way-ANOVA modeled time effects on GM/WM volumes, and then alterations in resting-state-functional-connectivity (RSFC) were assessed. RESULTS: Significant time effects on GM volumes were in caudate (F=11.20), insula (INS, F=10.11), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC, F=13.32) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, F=12.18), and on WM volumes in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, F=15.70), PCC (F=15.56) and parahippocampus (PHIPP, F=17.96, P(FDR)

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the critical role of the insula in pain pathways and its close relation with the perceived intensity of nociceptive stimuli. We aimed to identify the structural and functional characteristics of the insula during periovulatory phase in women with primary dysmenorrhea (PDM), and further investigate its association with the intensity of perceived pain during menstruation. Optimized voxel-based morphometry and functional connectivity (FC) analyses were applied by using 3-dimensional T1-weighted and resting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 36 patients at the peri-ovulation phase and 29 age-, education-, and gender-matched healthy controls (HC). A visual analogue scale (VAS) was used to examine the intensity of the abdominal pain at periovulation and menstruation. In our results, PDM patients had significant higher VAS-rating during menstruaion than periovulation. Compared with the HC, PDM patients had lower gray matter density in the left anterior insula (aINS). Taken the left aINS as a seed region, we further found hypoconnectivity between aINS and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which showed negative relation with the VAS during menstruation. As the aINS is a key site of the salience network (SN) and the mPFC is a critical region in the default mode network (DMN), it's implicated a trait-related central-alteration that communications between pain attention and perception networks were disrupted without the ongoing menstrual pain. Moreover, result of correlation analysis, at least in part, suggested a possible role of altered FC (pain-free period) in predicting pain perception (menstruation).

Functional constipation (FC) is a common functional gastrointestinal disorder (FGID) with a higher prevalence in clinical practice. The primary brain regions involved in emotional arousal regulation, somatic, sensory and motor control processing have been identified with neuroimaging in FGID. It remains unclear how these factors interact to influence the baseline brain activity of patients with FC. In the current study, we combined resting-state fMRI (RS-fMRI) with Granger causality analysis (GCA) to investigate the causal interactions of the brain areas in 14 patients with FC and in 26 healthy controls (HC). Our data showed significant differences in baseline brain activities in a number of major brain regions implicated in emotional process modulation (i.e. dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-dACC, anterior insula-aINS, orbitofrontal cortex-OFC, hippocampus-HIPP), somatic and sensory processing, and motor control (i.e., supplementary motor area-SMA, precentral gyrus-PreCen) (P

Obesity-related brain gray (GM) and white matter (WM) abnormalities have been reported in regions associated with food-intake control and cognitive-emotional regulation. Bariatric surgery (BS) is the most effective way to treat obesity and induce structural recovery of GM/WM density and WM integrity. It is unknown whether the surgery can promote structural changes in cortical morphometry along with weight-loss. Structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging and surface-based morphometry analysis were used to investigate BS-induced alterations of cortical morphometry in 22 obese participants who were tested before and one month post-BS, and in 21 obese controls (Ctr) without surgery who were tested twice (Baseline and One-month). Results showed that fasting plasma ghrelin, insulin, and leptin levels were significantly reduced post-BS (P

Obese individuals exhibit brain alterations of resting‐state functional connectivity (RSFC) integrity of resting‐state networks (RSNs) related to food intake. Bariatric surgery is currently the most effective treatment for combating morbid obesity. How bariatric surgery influences neurocircuitry is mostly unknown. Functional connectivity density (FCD) mapping was employed to calculate local (lFCD)/global (gFCD) voxelwise connectivity metrics in 22 obese participants who underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging before and 1 month after sleeve gastrectomy (SG), and in 19 obese controls (Ctr) without surgery but tested twice (baseline and 1‐month later). Two factor (group, time) repeated measures ANOVA was used to assess main and interaction effects in lFCD/gFCD; regions of interest were identified for subsequent seed to voxel connectivity analyses to assess resting‐state functional connectivity and to examine association with weight loss. Bariatric surgery significantly decreased lFCD in VMPFC, posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)/dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and decreased gFCD in VMPFC, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and right insula (p (FWE)

The aim of this study is to identify potential biomarkers that may distinguish people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) from cognitively intact elderly. We analyzed the features of rich-club hierarchical network between the AD and a control group by diffusion tensor imaging. We detected that the changes between the two groups were located mainly in the feeder and local connections. Then, we calculated the betweenness centrality of the rich nodes and the strength values of all feeder connections, and we chose the nodes and connections that showed the most significant differences as features. We found that 1) Feeder and local connections were changed in the AD group; 2) Rich nodes of the left putamen and precuneus had significant differences in betweenness centrality between the AD and control groups; 3) Three connections showed significant differences. The obtained features were fed into a linear discriminant analysis for classifying AD from cognitively intact elderly. The classification accuracy is superior to that of traditional biomarkers (hippocampal volume and clinical scores). Our results suggested that rich-club hierarchical network analysis is a viable tool for finding potential biomarkers. The obtained features can be applied as potential biomarkers for distinguishing AD patients from cognitively intact elderly.

Eating behaviors are closely related to body weight, and eating traits are depicted in three dimensions: dietary restraint, disinhibition, and hunger. The current study aims to explore whether these aspects of eating behaviors are related to intrinsic brain activation, and to further investigate the relationship between the brain activation relating to these eating traits and body weight, as well as the link between function connectivity (FC) of the correlative brain regions and body weight. Our results demonstrated positive associations between dietary restraint and baseline activation of the frontal and the temporal regions (i.e., food reward encoding) and the limbic regions (i.e., homeostatic control, including the hypothalamus). Disinhibition was positively associated with the activation of the frontal motivational system (i.e., OFC) and the premotor cortex. Hunger was positively related to extensive activations in the prefrontal, temporal, and limbic, as well as in the cerebellum. Within the brain regions relating to dietary restraint, weight status was negatively correlated with FC of the left middle temporal gyrus and left inferior temporal gyrus, and was positively associated with the FC of regions in the anterior temporal gyrus and fusiform visual cortex. Weight status was positively associated with the FC within regions in the prefrontal motor cortex and the right ACC serving inhibition, and was negatively related with the FC of regions in the frontal cortical-basal ganglia-thalamic circuits responding to hunger control. Our data depicted an association between intrinsic brain activation and dietary restraint, disinhibition, and hunger, and presented the links of their activations and FCs with weight status.

Essential tremor (ET) is a neurological disorder characterized by rhythmic, involuntary shaking of a part or parts of the body. The most common tremor is seen in the hands/arms and fingers. This paper presents an evaluation of ETs monitoring based on finger-to-nose test measurement as captured by small wireless devices working in shortwave or $S$ -band frequency range. The acquired signals in terms of amplitude and phase information are used to detect a tremor in the hands. Linearly transforming raw phase data acquired in the $S$ -band were carried out for calibrating the phase information and to improve accuracy. The data samples are used for classification using support vector machine algorithm. This model is used to differentiate the tremor and nontremor data efficiently based on secondary features that characterize ET. The accuracy of our measurements maintains linearity, and more than 90% accuracy rate is achieved between the feature set and data samples.

Neuroimaging studies have revealed brain functional abnormalities in frontal-mesolimbic regions in obesity. However, the effects of obesity on brain network topology remains largely unknown. In the current study, we employed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and graph theory methods to investigate obesity-related changes in brain network topology in 26 obese patients and 28 normal weight subjects. Results revealed that the whole-brain networks of the two groups exhibited typical features of small-world topology. Obese patients showed significantly increased shortest path length (Lp) and decreased global efficiency (Eglob). Moreover, decreased nodal-degree/efficiency was found in frontal (medial orbitofrontal cortex-mOFC, rostral anterior cingulate cortex-rACC), striatal (caudate/nucleus accumbens) and limbic regions (insula, amygdala, hippocampus/parahippocampal gyrus) and thalamus in obese patients. Network-based statistics showed that a sub-network, composed of 31 nodes and 30 edges, was significantly disrupted in obese patients; 29 out of 30 connections were associated with the right rACC. In the obese group, Lp and Eglob were negatively correlated with body mass index (BMI, P

Background: Evidence from neuroimaging has implicated abnormal cerebral cortical patterns in schizophrenia. Application of machine learning techniques is required for identifying a structural signature at the individual level reflecting neurobiological substrates of schizophrenia. Methods: 52 Patients and 66 healthy controls were recruited within the same period. Multivariate computation was used to examine the abnormalities of cortical features in schizophrenia. Features were selected by least absolute shrinkage and the selection operator (LASSO) method. The diagnostic capacity of multi-dimensional cortical neuroanatomical pattern-based classification was evaluated based on diagnostic tests. Findings: The features of mean curvature (left insula and left inferior frontal gyrus), cortical thickness (left fusiform gyrus), and metric distortion (left cuneus and right superior temporal gyrus) revealed both group differences and diagnostic capacity. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.88, and the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were 94%, 82%, and 88% respectively. There was a positive association between the index score derived from multi-dimensional patterns and symptom severity (r = 0.40, P< 0.01) for patients. Our findings demonstrated a view of cortical differences with the capacity to discriminate patients with schizophrenia. Structural neuroimaging-based signatures hold potential promise of paving the road for clinical utility in schizophrenia. Interpretation: Our findings demonstrate a view of cortical differences with capacity to discriminate patients with schizophrenia. Structural neuroimaging-based signatures hold potential promise of paving the road for clinical utility in schizophrenia. Funding Statement:This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China under Grant Nos. 2014CB543203 and 2015CB856403, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 81471811, 81471738 and 61401346, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Dr Qin) and grants 81571651 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and 2017ZDXM-SF-048 from the Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi Province (Dr Yin). Declaration of Interest: No disclosure was reported. Ethics Approval Statement: This study was approved by the local Research Ethics Committee (Xijing Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University). All participants gave written informed consent after a complete description of this study

The aim of this work is to investigate the differences of effective connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) in Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and normal controls (NC). The technique of independent component analysis (ICA) was applied to identify DMN components and multivariate Granger causality analysis (mGCA) was used to explore an effective connectivity pattern. We found that: (i) connections in AD were decreased than those in NC, in terms of intensity and quantity. Posterior cingulated cortex (PCC) exhibited significant activity in NC as it connected with most of the other regions within the DMN. Besides, the PCC was the convergence center which only received interactions from other regions; (ii) right inferior temporal cortex (rITC) in the NC exhibited stronger interactions with other regions within the DMN compared with AD patients; and (iii) interactions between medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and bilateral inferior parietal cortex (IPC) in the NC were weaker than those in AD patients. These findings may implicate a brain dysfunction in AD patients and reveal more pathophysiological characteristics of AD.

Little work has been done on the effect of being overweight on the wireless narrowband radio propagation of wearable medical instruments. In this paper, by applying a finite-difference time-domain technique and a statistical learning method, the authors find that being overweight might be an obstacle to body-surface wireless communication. The findings have certain instructive meanings for those engineers who are designing on-body medical instruments for patients, especially those patients who are overweight.

To assess the longitudinal gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) changes between repeated observations 1 year apart in a group of the early clinical stage of migraine patients without aura, and to explore the relationship of such structural changes with headache activity, we studied patients newly diagnosed with episodic migraine lasting 8 to 14 weeks. Optimized voxel-based morphometry and tract-based spatial statistical analyses were used to evaluate changes in GM and WM by using 3-dimensional T1-weighted and diffusion-tensor imaging, respectively. At the 1-year follow-up examination, GM reduction was observed in the dorsolateral and medial part of the superior frontal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, hippocampus, precuneus, and primary and secondary somatosensory cortices. No significant differences were found in the fractional anisotropy and longitudinal, radial, and mean diffusivity of WM in migraine patients without aura within a year. Negative results were found for the association between changes in headache activity parameters and GM. Our results indicated that the GM and WM changed in different pathophysiological conditions of migraine patients without aura. The WM probably evolves slowly in the course of migraine chronicity. Perspective Our study found early involvement of GM reduction of sensory-discriminative brain regions in the pathologic process of migraine, but the WM did not exhibit significant changes in the same time interval. GM reduction in sensory-discriminative brain regions may characterize the pathophysiological features of migraine patients without aura in its early stage.

The number of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies regarding the human spine has considerably increased and it is challenging because of the spine’s small size and artifacts associated with the most commonly used clinical imaging method. A novel segmentation method based on the reduced field-of-view (rFOV) DTI dataset is presented in cervical spinal canal cerebrospinal fluid, spinal cord grey matter and white matter classification in both healthy volunteers and patients with neuromyelitis optica (NMO) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Due to each channel based on high resolution rFOV DTI images providing complementary information on spinal tissue segmentation, we want to choose a different contribution map from multiple channel images. Via principal component analysis (PCA) and a hybrid diffusion filter with a continuous switch applied on fourteen channel features, eigen maps can be obtained and used for tissue segmentation based on the Bayesian discrimination method. Relative to segmentation by a pair of expert readers, all of the automated segmentation results in the experiment fall in the good segmentation area and performed well, giving an average segmentation accuracy of about 0.852 for cervical spinal cord grey matter in terms of volume overlap. Furthermore, this has important applications in defining more accurate human spinal cord tissue maps when fusing structural data with diffusion data. rFOV DTI and the proposed automatic segmentation outperform traditional manual segmentation methods in classifying MR cervical spinal images and might be potentially helpful for detecting cervical spine diseases in NMO and MS.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relevance of the basal ganglia (BG) in pathogenesis of migraine by assessing the abnormal volume and resting-state networks of the BG in migraine patients without aura (MWoA). The volume of the subsets in the BG was compared between 40 MWoA and 40 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. The resting-state functional connectivity of BG subsets with abnormal volume was also investigated. Reduced volume in the left caudate and the right nucleus accumbens (NAc) was detected in the migraine group compared with healthy controls; meanwhile, increased functional connectivity between the BG and several brain regions within nociceptive and somatosensory processing pathways was observed. Correlation analysis revealed significant correlations between the volume of the bilateral caudate and right NAc and disease duration. In addition, an increased monthly frequency of migraine attack was associated with increased functional connectivity between the bilateral caudate and left insula, and longer disease duration was correlated with increased functional connectivity between the right NAc and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex. Our results revealed abnormal volume of BG and dysfunctional dynamics during interictal resting state within pain pathways of the BG in MWoA, which validated the association between the BG and migraine.Our findings revealed the presence of reduced volume in NAc and caudate of the BG and interictal dysfunctional dynamics within BG networks in MWoA. The abnormal structure and function within the pain-related pathways of the BG were possibly associated with impaired pain processing and modulatory processes in MWoA.

Studies on training/expertise-related effects on human brain in context of neuroplasticity have revealed that plastic changes modulate not only task activations but also patterns and strength of internetworks and intranetworks functional connectivity in the resting state. Much has known about plastic changes in resting state on global level; however, how training/expertise-related effect affects patterns of local spontaneous activity in resting brain remains elusive. We investigated the homogeneity of local blood oxygen level-dependent fluctuations in the resting state using a regional homogeneity (ReHo) analysis among 16 acupuncturists and 16 matched nonacupuncturists (NA). To prove acupuncturists' expertise, we used a series of psychophysical tests. Our results demonstrated that, acupuncturists significantly outperformed NA in tactile-motor and emotional regulation domain and the acupuncturist group showed increased coherence in local BOLD signal fluctuations in the left primary motor cortex (MI), the left primary somatosensory cortex (SI) and the left ventral medial prefrontal cortex/orbitofrontal cortex (VMPFC/OFC). Regression analysis displayed that, in the acupuncturists group, ReHo of VMPFC/OFC could predict behavioral outcomes, evidenced by negative correlation between unpleasantness ratings and ReHo of VMPFC/OFC and ReHo of SI and MI positively correlated with the duration of acupuncture practice. We suggest that expertise could modulate patterns of local resting state activity by increasing regional clustering strength, which is likely to contribute to advanced local information processing efficiency. Our study completes the understanding of neuroplasticity changes by adding the evidence of local resting state activity alterations, which is helpful for elucidating in what manner training effect extends beyond resting state. Hum Brain Mapp 35:1074-1084, 2014. (c) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

An attention network test (ANT) provides a behavioral measure of the efficiency of the three attention networks (alerting, orienting and executive networks) within a single task. In the present study, we investigated the effect of passive hyperthermia on the attention network with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The behavioral results showed that passive hyperthermia of 50 °C and 40% relative humidity impaired the executive function, but showed no effect on the alerting and orienting networks. The fMRI results showed that: (i) passive hyperthermia enhanced the activity in the right superior frontal gyrus and depressed the activity in the right middle occipital gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule and left culmen in the alerting network, (ii) passive hyperthermia enhanced the activity in the temporal lobe and depressed the activity in the frontal lobe, parietal lobe and occipital lobe in the orienting network, and (iii) passive hyperthermia enhanced the activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex but did not affect the activity in the anterior cingulate. We concluded that passive hyperthermia impaired executive function, especially the efficiency of resolving conflict and the negative effects of passive hyperthermia on alerting and orienting were overcome through variant regional brain activation.

Prader‐Willi syndrome (PWS) is a genetic imprinting disorder that is mainly characterized by hyperphagia and childhood obesity. Previous neuroimaging studies revealed that there is a significant difference in brain activation patterns between obese children with and without PWS. However, whether there are differences in the brain structure of obese children with and without PWS remains elusive. In the current study, we used T1‐weighted and diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging to investigate alterations in the brain structure, such as the cortical volume and white matter integrity, in relation to this eating disorder in 12 children with PWS, 18 obese children without PWS (OB) and 18 healthy controls. Compared with the controls, both the PWS and OB groups exhibited alterations in cortical volume, with similar deficit patterns in 10 co‐varying brain regions in the bilateral dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortices, right anterior cingulate cortex, and bilateral temporal lobe. The white matter integrities of the above regions were then examined with an analysis method based on probabilistic tractography. The PWS group exhibited distinct changes in the reduced fractional anisotropy of white matter fibers connected to the co‐varying regions, whereas the OB group did not. Our findings indicated that PWS and OB share similar gray matter alterations that are responsible for the development of eating disorders. Additionally, the distinct white matter alterations might explain the symptoms associated with food intake in PWS, including excessive hyperphagia and constant hunger. Hum Brain Mapp 38:4228–4238, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Previous studies have proven that migraine and depression are bidirectionally linked. However, few studies have investigated white matter (WM) integrity affected by depressive symptoms in patients suffering from migraine without aura (MWoA). Forty patients with MWoA were divided into two groups according to their self-rating depression scale (SDS) score in the present study, including 20 in the SDS (+) (SDS>49) group and 20 in the SDS (-) (SDS49) group. Forty healthy participants were also recruited as the control group. Tract-based spatial statistics analyses with multiple diffusion tensor imaging-derived indices [fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), radial diffusivity (RD), axial diffusivity (AD)] were employed collectively to investigate WM integrity between all patients with MWoA and all healthy controls, between each subgroup (SDS (-) group and SDS (+) group) and healthy controls, and between the SDS (-) and SDS (+) groups. Compared with healthy controls, decreased AD was shown in several WM tracts of the whole MWoA group, SDS (-) group and SDS (+) group. In addition, compared with the SDS (-) group, the SDS (+) group showed decreased FA and increased MD and RD, with conserved AD, including the genu, body and splenium of the corpus callosum, bilateral superior longitudinal fasciculi, the right anterior corona radiata and some other WM tracts, similar to previous findings in depression disorder. Furthermore, mean FA and RD in some of the above-mentioned WM tracts in the SDS (+) group were correlated significantly with SDS scores, including the genu and splenium of the corpus callosum, the right anterior corona radiata and the superior longitudinal fasciculi. Our results suggest that WM integrity may be affected by both depression symptoms (more sensitive as RD) and migraine (more sensitive as AD). The findings may serve as a sensitive biomarker of depression severity in MWoA. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Although previous resting-state studies have reported abnormal functional cerebral changes in patients with migraine without aura (MwoA), few have focused on alterations in both regional spontaneous neuronal activity and corresponding brain circuits in MwoA patients during rest. Eighteen MwoA patients and 18 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HC) were recruited in the current study. Baseline cerebral alterations were investigated using amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and region of interest (ROI)-based functional connectivity (FC) analyses. Compared with HC, MwoA patients showed decreased ALFF values in the left rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) as well as increased ALFF values in the right thalamus. FC analysis also revealed abnormal FCs associated with these ROIs. In addition, ALFF values of the left rACC correlated with duration of disease in MwoA. Our findings could lead to a better understanding of intrinsic functional architecture of baseline brain activity in MwoA, providing both regional and brain circuit spontaneous neuronal activity properties. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PraderWilli syndrome (PWS) is a genetic imprinting disorder characterized mainly by hyperphagia and early childhood obesity. Previous functional neuroimaging studies used visual stimuli to examine abnormal activities in the eating-related neural circuitry of patients with PWS. It was found that patients with PWS exhibited both excessive hunger and hyperphagia consistently, even in situations without any food stimulation. In the present study, we employed resting-state functional MRI techniques to investigate abnormal brain networks related to eating disorders in children with PWS. First, we applied amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation analysis to define the regions of interest that showed significant alterations in resting-state brain activity levels in patients compared with their sibling control group. We then applied a functional connectivity (FC) analysis to these regions of interest in order to characterize interactions among the brain regions. Our results demonstrated that patients with PWS showed decreased FC strength in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC)/inferior parietal lobe (IPL), MPFC/precuneus, IPL/precuneus and IPL/hippocampus in the default mode network; decreased FC strength in the pre-/postcentral gyri and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)/orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in the motor sensory network and prefrontal cortex network, respectively; and increased FC strength in the anterior cingulate cortex/insula, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC)/OFC and DLPFC/VLPFC in the core network and prefrontal cortex network, respectively. These findings indicate that there are FC alterations among the brain regions implicated in eating as well as rewarding, even during the resting state, which may provide further evidence supporting the use of PWS as a model to study obesity and to provide information on potential neural targets for the medical treatment of overeating. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Objective Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is often a transitional state between normal aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). When observed longitudinally, some MCI patients convert to AD, while a considerable portion either remains MCI or revert to a normal functioning state. This divergence has provided some enlightenment on a potential biomarker to be represented in the resting state brain activities of MCI patients with different post-hoc labels. Recent studies have shown impaired executive functions, other than typically explicated memory impairment with AD/MCI patients. This observation raises the question that whether or not the executive control network (ECN) was impaired, which pivotally supports the central executive functions. Given the fact that effective connectivity is a sufficient index in detecting resting brain abnormalities in AD/MCI, the current study specifically asks a question whether the effective connectivity patterns are differentiated in MCI patients with different post-hoc labels. Methods We divided the MCI subjects into three groups depending on their progressive state obtained longitudinally: 1) 15 MCI-R subjects: MCI reverted to the normal functioning state and stabilized to the normal state in 24 months; 2) 35 MCI-S subjects: MCI patients maintained this disease in a stable state for 24 months; 3) 22 MCI-P subjects: MCI progressed to AD and stabilized to AD in 24 months, and 4) 39 age-matched normal control subjects (NC). We conducted a Granger causality analysis after identifying the core nodes of ECN in all of the subjects using Independent Component Analysis. Our findings revealed that different MCI groups presented different effective connectivity patterns within the ECN compared to the NC group. Specifically, (1) dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dLPFC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) were the core nodes in the ECN network that exhibited different connecting patterns; (2) an effective connection circuit "R.dLPFC→ right caudate→ left thalamus→R.dLPFC" in the ECN showed different levels of damage; and (3) there were four pathways between the R.dLPFC and L.LP, and these four pathways were also different. Results Our results would help to understand the potential central mechanism of MCI patients. The differentiated effective connectivity of ECN may serve as a potential biomarker for early detection of AD, which may also provide a reference for clinical researchers to manipulate active but distinctive interventions for MCI patients who have different risks.

The thalamus has widespread connections with the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and modulates communication between the striatum and PFC, which is crucial to the neural mechanisms of smoking. However, relatively few studies focused on the thalamic resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) patterns and their association with smoking behaviors in smokers. 24 young male smokers and 24 non-smokers were enrolled in our study. Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) was used to assess the nicotine dependence level. The bilateral thalamic RSFC patterns were compared between smokers and non-smokers. The relationship between neuroimaging findings and smoking behaviors (FTND and pack-years) were also investigated in smokers. Relative to nonsmokers, smokers showed reduced RSFC strength between the left thalamus and several brain regions, i.e. the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the bilateral caudate. In addition, the right thalamus showed reduced RSFC with the right dlPFC as well as the bilateral insula in smokers. Therefore, the findings in the current study revealed the reduced RSFC of the thalamus with the dlPFC, the ACC, the insula and the caudate in smokers, which provided new insights into the roles of the thalamus in nicotine addiction from a function integration perspective.

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment MCI (aMCI) has a high progression to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recently, resting-state functional MRI (RS-fMRI) has been increasingly utilized in studying the pathogenesis of aMCI, especially in resting-state networks (RSNs). In the current study, we aimed to explore abnormal RSNs related to memory deficits in aMCI patients compared to the aged-matched healthy control group using RS-fMRI techniques. Firstly, we used ALFF (amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation) method to define the regions of interest (ROIs) which exhibited significant changes in aMCI compared with the control group. Then, we divided these ROIs into different networks in line with prior studies. The aim of this study is to explore the functional connectivity between these ROIs within networks and also to investigate the connectivity between networks. Comparing aMCI to the control group, our results showed that 1) the hippocampus (HIPP) had decreased FC with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and inferior parietal lobe (IPL), and the mPFC showed increased connectivity to IPL in the default mode network; 2) the thalamus showed decreased FC with the putamen and HIPP, and the HIPP showed increased connectivity to the putamen in the limbic system; 3) the supplementary motor area had decreased FC with the middle temporal gyrus and increased FC with the superior parietal lobe in the sensorimotor network; 4) increased connectivity between the lingual gyrus and middle occipital gyrus in the visual network; and 5) the DMN has reduced inter-network connectivities with the SMN and VN. These findings indicated that functional brain networks involved in cognition such as episodic memory, sensorimotor and visual cognition in aMCI were altered, and provided a new sight in understanding the important subtype of aMCI.

Recent brain imaging studies have emphasized the role of regional brain activity abnormalities in the pathophysiology of functional dyspepsia (FD). However, whether the functional connectivity between brain regions is changed, especially between the cerebral hemispheres, in patients with FD remains unknown. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the interhemispheric resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) changes in patients with FD. Resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) was performed in 26 patients with FD and in 20 matched healthy controls. An interhemispheric RSFC map was obtained by calculating the Pearson correlation (Fisher Z transformed) between each pair of homotopic voxel time series for each subject. The between-group difference in interhemispheric RSFC was then examined at global and voxelwise levels separately. The global difference in interhemispheric RSFC between groups was tested using the independent two-sample t-test. Voxelwise comparisons were carried out using a permutation-based nonparametric test, and multiple comparisons across space were corrected using the threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) method. The results showed that patients with FD had higher global interhemispheric RSFC than healthy controls (p

Aim Multiple diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) derived indices may help to deduce the pathophysiological type of white matter (WM) changes and provide more specific biomarkers of WM neuropathology in the whole brain of migraine patients without aura (MWoA). Methods Twenty MWoA and 20 age-, education- and gender-matched healthy volunteers participated in this study. Tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) was employed to investigate the WM abnormalities in MWoA by integrating multiple indices, including fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), radial diffusivity (RD), and axial diffusivity (AD). Results Compared with healthy controls, MWoA showed significantly lower FA, MD and AD in multiple brain regions, whereas no difference in RD was observed. Specifically, the overlap among the lower FA, MD, and AD was found in the genu, body, and splenium part of the corpus callosum (CC), the right anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC) and the posterior limb of the internal capsule (PLIC) in MWoA compared with healthy controls. Additionally, some of the above WM findings were significantly correlated with duration and headache frequency in MWoA. Conclusion Given that decreased AD may suggest axonal loss, our findings may reveal axonal loss in MWoA.

Migraine is a primary headache disorder characterized by recurrent attacks of throbbing pain associated with neurological, gastrointestinal and autonomic symptoms. Previous studies have detected structural deficits and functional impairments in migraine patients. However, researchers have failed to investigate the functional connectivity alterations of regions with structural deficits during the resting state. Twenty-one migraine patients without aura and 21 age-and gender-matched healthy controls participated in our study. Voxel-based morphometric (VBM) analysis and functional connectivity were employed to investigate the abnormal structural and resting-state properties, respectively, in migraine patients without aura. Relative to healthy comparison subjects, migraine patients showed significantly decreased gray matter volume in five brain regions: the left medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), right occipital lobe, cerebellum and brainstem. The gray matter volume of the dACC was correlated with the duration of disease in migraine patients, and thus we chose this region as the seeding area for resting-state analysis. We found that migraine patients showed increased functional connectivity between several regions and the left dACC, i.e. the bilateral middle temporal lobe, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Furthermore, the functional connectivity between the dACC and two regions (i.e. DLPFC and OFC) was correlated with the duration of disease in migraine patients. We suggest that frequent nociceptive input has modified the structural and functional patterns of the frontal cortex, and these changes may explain the functional impairments in migraine patients. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Traditional addiction studies have focused specifically on the use of chemical substances, while more recent studies have begun to focus on behavioral processes. Process addiction is an addiction to a natural and in many cases essential behavior such as eating and sex. Acquired continued and compulsive overeating is one process addiction similar to other activities or behaviors, such as excessive video gaming, pathological gambling, hyper-sexuality or excessive internet use where the addict shows loss of control, an inability to stop or modify the activity, and a range of signs and symptoms that can be as debilitating as those associated with substance abuse or addiction. Individuals with process addiction would meet criteria for addiction if their substance of abuse was considered a drug. They present characteristics like other addicts, have a chronic and relapsing course and often the addiction leaves them with loss of health, happiness and a difficulty treating the disease. Gambling has been the least contentious process addiction and will appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Food and sex have been the most difficult for the field to consider as addictions. However, food may have the clearest, long-standing scientific research behind it. In this review, we provide a summary of the literature on process (behavior) addictions and a discussion of food addiction, as well as pathological gambling and internet addiction disorder.

Previous functional imaging studies on heroin addicts have focused on abnormal brain functions based on specific tasks, while few fMRI studies concentrated on the resting-state abnormalities of heroin-dependent individuals. In the current study, we applied the pattern classification technique, which employs the feature extraction method of non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) and a support vector machine (SVM) classifier. Its main purpose was to characterize the discrepancy in activation patterns between heroin-dependent individuals and healthy subjects during the resting state. The results displayed a high accuracy in the activation pattern differences of the two groups, which included the orbitofrontal cortex pm, cingulate gyrus, frontal and para-limbic regions such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), hippocampal/parahippocampal region, amygdala, caudate, putamen, as well as the posterior insula and thalamus. These findings indicate that significant biomarkers exist among the network of circuits that are involved in drug abuse. The implications from our study may help explain the behavioral and neuropsychological deficits in heroin-dependent individuals and shed light on the mechanisms underlying heroin addiction. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Granger causality model (GCM) derived from multivariate vector autoregressive models of data has been employed for identifying effective connectivity in the human brain with functional MR imaging (fMRI) and to reveal complex temporal and spatial dynamics underlying a variety of cognitive processes. In the most recent fMRI effective connectivity measures, pairwise GCM has commonly been applied based on single voxel values or average values from special brain areas at the group level. Although a few novel conditional GCM methods have been proposed to quantify the connections between brain areas, our study is the first to propose a viable standardized approach for group analysis of an fMRI data with GCM. To compare the effectiveness of our approach with traditional pairwise GCM models, we applied a well-established conditional GCM to pre-selected time series of brain regions resulting from general linear model (GLM) and group spatial kernel independent component analysis (ICA) of an fMRI dataset in the temporal domain. Datasets consisting of one task-related and one resting-state fMRI were used to investigate connections among brain areas with the conditional GCM method. With the GLM detected brain activation regions in the emotion related cortex during the block design paradigm, the conditional GCM method was proposed to study the causality of the habituation between the left amygdala and pregenual cingulate cortex during emotion processing. For the resting-state dataset, it is possible to calculate not only the effective connectivity between networks but also the heterogeneity within a single network. Our results have further shown a particular interacting pattern of default mode network (DMN) that can be characterized as both afferent and efferent influences on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). These results suggest that the conditional GCM approach based on a linear multivariate vector autoregressive (MVAR) model can achieve greater accuracy in detecting network connectivity than the widely used pairwise GCM, and this group analysis methodology can be quite useful to extend the information obtainable in fMRI.

The rising number of obese individuals on a global scale has led the scientific community to determine the causes for this disease. Besides over-consumption of high-caloric foods and/or endocrine dysfunction, food addiction has been found to be a major culprit for weight gain. Food addiction results from craving certain food or food-substances so as to obtain a state of heightened pleasure, energy or excitement. Major intervention is needed in curbing these cravings and suppressing the appetite to promote weight loss. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been applied to study why obese individuals overeat. Introduction of this technology will serve as a means in paving the way for new weight loss drugs.

To address the causes for obesity in all of China is not feasible in a single article. There are hundreds of ethnic groups over a vast number of provinces. The diet and lifestyle of each is different based upon cultural/ethnic traditions and the environment. Several studies mentioned in this review have been done in particular areas and/or on specific population groups with regards to obesity and health risks associated with being overweight. Obesity is a multifactorial disease that is associated with genetic, physiological, environmental, and cultural/traditional perspectives in order to provide a broadened view on this epidemic in China. In this review, we will assess specific obesity gene and environment interactions, childhood obesity etiology, metabolic syndrome, and dietary and behavioral causes. We attempt to discuss obesity issues particularly in the Han Chinese population ranging from children, adolescents, adults to geriatrics.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to investigate sex-related differences in brain abnormalities in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Like IBS, women with functional constipation (FC) are 2.1 times as many as men. No study has been performed yet to examine sex-related differences in brain activity and connectivity in patients with FC. Here, we employed resting-state fMRI with amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) to investigate brain functional differences in 51 patients with FC (34 females) and 52 healthy controls (34 females). Results showed abdominal pain and abdominal distension correlated with trait (TAI) and state (SAI) anxiety ratings in the female FC group, and abdominal distension correlated with sensation of incomplete evacuation in the male FC group. Two-way ANOVA revealed sex effects on ALFF in precentral gyrus, thalamus, insula (INS), and orbital frontal cortex (OFC, PFWE

To discuss which brain region potentially functioned and switched between the immediate and delayed response of acupuncture.A nonrepeated event-related functional MRI (fMRI) design was used to investigate the spatial and temporal patterns of acupuncture effects induced by needling an acupoint ST36 (ACU) and a nonmeridian point (SHAM). The standard general linear model was used to detect the immediate neural responses of acupuncture. Graph theory analysis was used to characterize the functional integrated network of the acupuncture delayed effect.Acupuncture induced significant signal changes in the limbic/paralimbic areas, neocortical regions, brainstem, and cerebellum for immediate effect both in ACU and SHAM. Some of these brain regions showed strong functional connectivity for a delayed effect in ACU. Conjunction analysis showed that the insula played a critical role during the overall process of ACU. No overlapping brain regions were found in SHAM.The findings of this study suggested that the delayed effects may reflect a more significant characteristic underlying acupuncture. Given that the insula as a relay station switched between the immediate and delayed response, it suggested that divergent functional connectivity patterns may mediate the acupuncture-related effects for ACU and SHAM.

Previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated both structural and functional damages in heroin-dependent individuals. However, few studies investigated gray matter deficits and abnormal resting-state networks together in heroin-dependent individuals. In the present study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to identify brain regions with gray matter density reduction. Resting-state fMRI connectivity analysis was employed to assess potential functional abnormalities during resting-state. All clinical significances were investigated by examining their association with duration of heroin use. Compared with healthy subjects, heroin-dependent individuals showed significant reduction in gray matter density in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and a decrease in resting-state functional connectivity between the right DLPFC and left inferior parietal lobe (IPL). The gray matter density of the right DLPFC and its resting-state functional connectivity with the left IPL both showed significantly negative correlation with duration of heroin use, which were likely to be related to the functional impairments in decision-making and cognitive control exhibited by heroin-dependent individuals. Our findings demonstrated that long heroin dependence impairs the right DLPFC in heroin-dependent individuals, including structural deficits and resting-state functional impairments.

Clinical acupuncture typically involves an effective treatment phase several hours post-therapy. We previously identified regions that carry the time-varied signals based on the BLOCK experimental paradigm. Here we characterize the brain network by applying the graph theory analysis during the post-acupuncture resting state. Our results show gradually increasing connections in the brainstem during verum acupuncture (ACU). The anterior insula plays an important role in connecting the components of the brain networks following ACU. We suggest that acupuncture can induce significant complex response patterns with relatively more robust magnitudes. Our findings provide direct evidence that the post-needling resting state contains acupuncture-related effects that are due to the slow-acting nature of acupuncture.

When studying the neural responses to acupuncture with a block‐designed paradigm, its temporal dynamics predicted by the general linear model (GLM) conforms to typical “on‐off” variations during a limited period of the experiment manipulation. Despite a lack of direct evidence associating its psychophysiological response, numerous clinical reports suggest that acupuncture can provide pain relief beyond a needling session. Therefore, a typical GLM analysis may be insensitive or inappropriate for identifying altered neural responses resulting from acupuncture. We developed a new approach to investigate the dynamics underlying sustained effects of acupuncture. Specifically, we designed two separate models to evaluate the baseline activities (prior to stimulation) and neural activities in sequential epochs, using three block‐designed functional runs: acupuncture at acupoint ST36, nonmeridian point (NMP) stimulation, and a visual task. We found that the activity patterns during rest were associated with the stimulus types and that the resting activities might be even higher than that of stimulation phases. Such effects of the elevated activity during rest may reduce or eliminate the activity during stimulus conditions or even reverse the sign of brain activation using conventional GLM analysis. Moreover, such sustained responses, followed by acupuncture at ST36 and NMP, exhibited distinct patterns in wide brain structures, particularly in the limbic system and brainstem. These findings may pose great implications for the design and interpretation of a range of acupuncture neuroimaging studies. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

To investigate the brain response patterns of modulation of GB37 (Guangming) and KI8 (Jiaoxin).An experiment using nonrepeated event-related fMRI design was carried out on 28 subjects with electroacupuncture stimulation (EAS) at GB37 or KI8 on the left leg. The discrete cosine transform and functional connectivity methods were adopted to detect the differences related with these two acupoints before and after the EAS.Spatial patterns were distinct for EAS at the two acupoints, and the overlapping brain regions were mainly located in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and precuneus (pC). Two opposite patterns of modulation in the default mode network were detected from the temporal patterns with the overlapping PCC/pC as the region of interest. Furthermore, the specific responses of sustained effects at these acupoints were also identified.Spatial and temporal patterns of the sustained effect modulation of GB37 and KI8 were distinct. We suggest these findings may attribute to the functional specificity of a certain acupoint. Moreover, our current results reflect a significant methodological contribution to future acupuncture studies.

In the current study, we investigated whether or not stimulation at vision and nonvision-related acupoints was able to induce similarity in the time domain, although stimulation at different acupoints could produce similar spatial distributions. This phenomenon still remains uncertain and contradictory. We introduced a novel experimental paradigm using a modified non-repeated event-related (NRER) design, and utilized the methods of independent component analysis (ICA) combined with seed correlated functional connectivity analysis to locate visual cortical activations and to study their temporal characteristics during electro-acupuncture (EAS) at vision-related acupoint GB 37 and nonvision-related acupoint KI 8. Results showed that strong activations were present in the visual cortical areas (BA 17/18/19) at both acupoints, but temporal correlation analysis indicated that they were modulated in opposite directions during the resting state after acupuncture. Our results revealed that acupuncture at vision and nonvision-related acupoints can induce similar activations in spatial distribution but different modulation effects temporally.

Obesity research has recognized that there are many factors contributing to this devastating disorder. Much debate has arisen among scientists to develop models that might be useful in understanding why obesity has become a major health problem and epidemic. However, much of the current debate has been fractious and causes of obesity have been attributed solely to behavior or fast food, personality issues, depression, addiction, or genetics. One of the neurohormonal and genetic causes has been found in Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), which results in excessive, pathologic reinforcement of food. We have studied PWS to delineate the neurobiology so that environmental cue stimulation may be explained for PWS. Neuroimaging studies have shown that appetizing food and food cues are associated with appetite stimulation. Appetite control is poor in PWS, thus food cues play a major role in its regulation. Hence, PWS may be the genetic model of choice for obesity.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to qualify the network properties of the brain networks between two different mental tasks (play task or rest task) in a healthy population. Methods and Materials: EEG signals were recorded from 19 healthy subjects when performing different mental tasks. Partial directed coherence (PDC) analysis, based on Granger causality (GC), was used to assess the effective brain networks during the different mental tasks. Moreover, the network measures, including degree, degree distribution, local and global efficiency in delta, theta, alpha, and beta rhythms were calculated and analyzed. Results: The local efficiency is higher in the beta frequency and lower in the theta frequency during play task whereas the global efficiency is higher in the theta frequency and lower in the beta frequency in the rest task. Significance: This study reveals the network measures during different mental states and efficiency measures may be used as characteristic quantities for improvement in attentional performance.