Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE, 68010, USA.
College of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, 68198, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2021 Mar 31;31(5):2534-2548. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa372.
A major goal of many translational neuroimaging studies is the identification of biomarkers of disease. However, a prerequisite for any such biomarker is robust reliability, which for magnetoencephalography (MEG) and many other imaging modalities has not been established. In this study, we examined the reliability of visual (Experiment 1) and somatosensory gating (Experiment 2) responses in 19 healthy adults who repeated these experiments for three visits spaced 18 months apart. Visual oscillatory and somatosensory oscillatory and evoked responses were imaged, and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were computed to examine the long-term reliability of these responses. In Experiment 1, ICCs showed good reliability for visual theta and alpha responses in occipital cortices, but poor reliability for gamma responses. In Experiment 2, the time series of somatosensory gamma and evoked responses in the contralateral somatosensory cortex showed good reliability. Finally, analyses of spontaneous baseline activity indicated excellent reliability for occipital alpha, moderate reliability for occipital theta, and poor reliability for visual/somatosensory gamma activity. Overall, MEG responses to visual and somatosensory stimuli show a high degree of reliability across 3 years and therefore may be stable indicators of sensory processing long term and thereby of potential interest as biomarkers of disease.
许多转化神经影像学研究的主要目标是确定疾病的生物标志物。然而，任何此类生物标志物的前提都是可靠的可靠性，对于脑磁图（MEG）和许多其他成像方式而言，这一点尚未得到证实。在这项研究中，我们检查了 19 名健康成年人在相隔 18 个月的三次访问中重复进行视觉（实验 1）和感觉门控（实验 2）实验的视觉（实验 1）和感觉门控（实验 2）反应的可靠性。对视觉振荡和感觉振荡以及诱发反应进行了成像，并计算了组内相关系数（ICC），以检查这些反应的长期可靠性。在实验 1 中，ICC 显示枕叶皮质的视觉θ和α反应具有良好的可靠性，但γ反应的可靠性较差。在实验 2 中，对侧感觉皮层中的感觉γ和诱发反应的时间序列显示出良好的可靠性。最后，对自发基线活动的分析表明，枕叶α具有极好的可靠性，枕叶θ具有中等可靠性，而视觉/感觉γ活动的可靠性较差。总体而言，MEG 对视觉和感觉刺激的反应在 3 年内具有高度的可靠性，因此可能是长期感觉处理的稳定指标，因此可能是疾病生物标志物的潜在研究热点。
