McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
J Neurotrauma. 2020 Aug 15;37(16):1788-1796. doi: 10.1089/neu.2019.6782. Epub 2020 Apr 27.
There is considerable interest in the long-term brain health of retired contact and collision sport athletes; however, little is known about possible underlying changes in functional brain connectivity in this group. We evaluated whole-brain functional connectivity patterns using multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to determine whether alterations in functional connectivity distinguish retired professional athletes from a matched group of healthy community control subjects. Thirty-two retired athletes with a history of multiple self-reported sport-related concussions and 36 healthy community control subjects who were similar in age and education, completed functional magnetic resonance imaging. We identified brain regions with abnormal functional connectivity patterns using whole-brain MVPA as implemented in the Conn toolbox. First-level MVPA was performed using 64 principal component analysis (PCA) components. Second-level F test was performed using the first three MVPA components for retired athletes > controls group contrast. seed-to-voxel analyses using the MVPA cluster results as seeds were performed to characterize functional connectivity abnormalities from brain regions identified by MVPA. MVPA revealed one cluster of abnormal functional connectivity located in cerebellar lobule V. This region of lobule V corresponded to the ventral attention network. seed-to-voxel analysis using the cerebellar MVPA cluster as a seed revealed multiple areas of cerebral cortical hyper-connectivity and hypo-connectivity in retired athletes when compared with controls. This initial report suggests that cerebellar dysfunction might be present and clinically important in some retired athletes.
人们对退役接触性和碰撞性运动运动员的长期大脑健康非常关注；然而，对于该群体中功能性脑连接可能存在的潜在变化却知之甚少。我们使用多体素模式分析（MVPA）评估全脑功能连接模式，以确定功能性连接的改变是否可以区分退役职业运动员和健康的社区对照组。32 名有多次自述与运动相关的脑震荡史的退役运动员和 36 名年龄和教育程度相似的健康社区对照组完成了功能磁共振成像。我们使用 Conn 工具箱中的全脑 MVPA 来识别具有异常功能连接模式的脑区。一级 MVPA 使用 64 个主成分分析（PCA）分量进行。使用退役运动员>对照组组对比的前三个 MVPA 分量进行二级 F 检验。使用 MVPA 聚类结果作为种子进行种子到体素分析，以描述 MVPA 确定的脑区的功能连接异常。MVPA 显示一个位于小脑小叶 V 的异常功能连接簇。该小叶 V 区域对应于腹侧注意网络。与对照组相比，使用小脑 MVPA 聚类作为种子的种子到体素分析显示，退役运动员的大脑皮质多个区域存在过度连接和连接不足。这一初步报告表明，小脑功能障碍可能存在于一些退役运动员中，并具有临床重要性。
