Beijing Neurosurgical Institute, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100050, China.
Sleep and Neuroimaging Center, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Oct 12;7(1):13074. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-13214-5.
Evidences have showed that the deprivation of vision can considerably alter the resting-state activity both within and beyond the visual cortices. However, the functional changes of the brain cortices related to partially vision-deprivation are still largely unknown. Using resting-state functional MR imaging, we quantitatively evaluated the regional homogeneity(ReHo) and functional connectivity(FC) changes between 25 pituitary adenoma patients with visual impairment and 25 healthy controls(HCs). Compared with HCs, PAs exhibited significant increased ReHo in the left superior occipital gyrus, bilateral middle occipital gyrus and reduced ReHo in the left inferior frontal gyrus and right middle temporal gyrus. PAs also showed decreased FC between vision-related area and higher-order cognitive brain areas. Furthermore, we identified that in the PAs group the FC between the left V1 and left V3 increased while the FC between left V2v and left V5 significantly decreased, the FC between left V4 area and the V3, V2d area increased. In our study, we identified that the ReHo and FC were altered between the vision-related cortices and other higher-order cognitive cortices along with disorganized functional connectivity within the visual system in PAs with visual impairment. These findings may provide important insights to understand the plasticity of visual network.
证据表明，视觉剥夺会极大地改变视觉皮层内外的静息状态活动。然而，与部分视觉剥夺相关的大脑皮层的功能变化仍知之甚少。我们使用静息态功能磁共振成像，定量评估了 25 例视觉障碍垂体腺瘤患者和 25 例健康对照者（HCs）之间的局部一致性（ReHo）和功能连接（FC）变化。与 HCs 相比，PA 患者左侧顶上回、双侧中颞回的 ReHo 显著增加，左侧额下回和右侧中颞回的 ReHo 显著降低。PA 患者还表现出与视觉相关区域和高级认知脑区之间的 FC 降低。此外，我们发现 PA 组左侧 V1 与左侧 V3 之间的 FC 增加，而左侧 V2v 与左侧 V5 之间的 FC 显著降低，左侧 V4 区域与 V3、V2d 区域之间的 FC 增加。在我们的研究中，我们发现视觉相关皮层与其他高级认知皮层之间的 ReHo 和 FC 发生了改变，同时视觉系统内的功能连接也出现了紊乱。这些发现可能为理解视觉网络的可塑性提供重要的见解。
