Medical Engineering and Technology Research Center, Shandong First Medical University & Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences, Tai'an, Shandong, China.
Department of Ophthalmology, Dezhou Municipal Hospital, Dezhou, Shandong, China.
Neural Plast. 2020 Apr 16;2020:8060869. doi: 10.1155/2020/8060869. eCollection 2020.
Anisometropic amblyopia usually occurs during early childhood and results in monocular visual deficit. Recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated structural and functional alterations in pediatric anisometropic amblyopia (PAA) patients. However, the relationship between structural and functional alterations remains largely unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between structural and functional alterations in PAA patients.
Eighteen PAA patients and 14 healthy children underwent a multimodal MRI scanning including T1WI and functional MRI (fMRI). Voxel-based morphometry was used to assess structural alterations between PAA patients and healthy children. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) was used to investigate changes in local spontaneous brain activity in the enrolled subjects. Correlations between structural, functional alterations, and clinical information were analyzed in the PAA group.
Compared with healthy children, PAA patients exhibited significantly reduced ReHo of spontaneous brain activity in the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) and right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and increased gray matter volume in the right lobules 4 and 5 of the cerebellum. The gray matter volume of the right lobules 4 and 5 of the cerebellum was negatively correlated with the ReHo values of the right MFG.
Our findings may suggest that PAA patients experience structural and functional abnormalities in brain regions related to oculomotor and visual-spatial information. In addition, the increased gray matter volume may compensate the decreased brain activity in the oculomotor regions, which reflects compensatory or neural plasticity in PAA patients.
屈光不正性弱视通常发生在儿童早期，导致单眼视觉缺陷。最近的神经影像学研究表明，儿童屈光不正性弱视（PAA）患者存在结构和功能改变。然而，结构和功能改变之间的关系在很大程度上仍然未知。本研究旨在探讨 PAA 患者结构和功能改变之间的关系。
18 名 PAA 患者和 14 名健康儿童接受了多模态 MRI 扫描，包括 T1WI 和功能 MRI（fMRI）。体素基形态计量学用于评估 PAA 患者和健康儿童之间的结构改变。局部一致性（ReHo）用于研究入组受试者局部自发脑活动的变化。在 PAA 组中分析了结构、功能改变与临床信息之间的相关性。
与健康儿童相比，PAA 患者右侧颞上回（STG）和右侧额中回（MFG）的自发脑活动 ReHo 值显著降低，右侧小脑 4 区和 5 区的灰质体积增加。小脑右侧 4 区和 5 区的灰质体积与右侧 MFG 的 ReHo 值呈负相关。
我们的发现可能表明 PAA 患者的眼动和视觉空间信息相关脑区存在结构和功能异常。此外，灰质体积的增加可能补偿了眼动区脑活动的减少，反映了 PAA 患者的代偿或神经可塑性。
