Hu Zhishan, Zhang Juan, Zhang Lingyan, Xiang Yu-Tao, Yuan Zhen
University of Macau, Faculty of Health Sciences, Macao Special Administrative Region, China.
University of Macau, Faculty of Education, Macao Special Administrative Region, China.
Neurophotonics. 2019 Apr;6(2):025008. doi: 10.1117/1.NPh.6.2.025008. Epub 2019 May 15.
Executive functions (EFs) associated with the frontal lobe are vital for goal-orientated behavior. To date, limited efforts have been made to examine the relationships among the behavior, brain activation, and topological organization of functional networks in the frontal lobe underlying various EF tasks, including inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. In this study, functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging technique was used to systematically inspect the differences in the brain activation and the topological organization of brain networks between various EF tasks in the frontal lobe. In addition, the relationships between brain activation/network properties and task performances and the relationships between brain activation and network properties were, respectively, examined for different EF tasks. Consequently, we have discovered that the nodal and global properties of the resting-state and task-evoked networks, respectively, exhibited significant correlations with the activation of various brain regions during various EF tasks. In particular, the measure that links the neural activation to the topological organization of the brain networks in the frontal lobe can serve as a synergistic indicator to examine the difference between various EF tasks, which paves a way toward a comprehensive understanding of the neural mechanism underlying EFs.
与额叶相关的执行功能(EFs)对目标导向行为至关重要。迄今为止,在研究包括抑制、工作记忆和认知灵活性在内的各种EF任务背后额叶功能网络的行为、大脑激活和拓扑组织之间的关系方面,所做的努力有限。在本研究中,使用功能近红外光谱神经成像技术系统地检查了额叶各种EF任务之间大脑激活和大脑网络拓扑组织的差异。此外,针对不同的EF任务,分别研究了大脑激活/网络特性与任务表现之间的关系以及大脑激活与网络特性之间的关系。因此,我们发现静息态和任务诱发网络的节点和全局特性分别与各种EF任务期间不同脑区的激活表现出显著相关性。特别是,将神经激活与额叶大脑网络拓扑组织联系起来的测量方法可以作为一个协同指标,用于检查各种EF任务之间的差异,这为全面理解EFs背后的神经机制铺平了道路。