Aquitaine Institute of Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience, UMR CNRS 5287, University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305-5723, USA.
Cerebellum. 2021 Dec;20(6):823-835. doi: 10.1007/s12311-021-01241-y. Epub 2021 Mar 3.
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is widely associated with cerebellar dysfunction and altered cerebro-cerebellar functional connectivity (FC) that lead to cognitive impairments. Evidence for this association comes from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) studies that assess time-averaged measures of FC across the duration of a typical scan. This approach, however, precludes the assessment of potentially FC dynamics happening at faster timescales. In this study, using rsfMRI data, we aim at exploring cerebro-cerebellar FC dynamics in AUD patients (N = 18) and age- and sex-matched controls (N = 18). In particular, we quantified group-level differences in the temporal variability of FC between the posterior cerebellum and large-scale cognitive systems, and we investigated the role of the cerebellum in large-scale brain dynamics in terms of the temporal flexibility and integration of its regions. We found that, relative to controls, the AUD group exhibited significantly greater FC variability between the cerebellum and both the frontoparietal executive control (F = 7.01, p(FDR) = 0.028) and ventral attention (F = 7.35, p(FDR) = 0.028) networks. Moreover, the AUD group exhibited significantly less flexibility (F = 8.61, p(FDR) = 0.028) and greater integration (F = 9.11, p(FDR) = 0.028) in the cerebellum. Finally, in an exploratory analysis, we found distributed changes in the dynamics of canonical large-scale networks in AUD. Overall, this study brings evidence of AUD-related alterations in dynamic FC within major cerebro-cerebellar networks. This pattern has implications for explaining the development and maintenance of this disorder and improving our understating of the cerebellum's involvement in addiction.
酒精使用障碍（AUD）与小脑功能障碍和改变的脑-小脑功能连接（FC）广泛相关，导致认知障碍。这种关联的证据来自静息态功能磁共振成像（rsfMRI）研究，这些研究评估了在典型扫描过程中跨越时间的 FC 的时间平均测量值。然而，这种方法排除了对潜在更快时间尺度上的 FC 动态的评估。在这项研究中，我们使用 rsfMRI 数据，旨在探索 AUD 患者（N=18）和年龄及性别匹配的对照组（N=18）之间的脑-小脑 FC 动态。特别是，我们量化了小脑与大规模认知系统之间 FC 的时间变异性的组间差异，并研究了小脑在大规模脑动力学中的作用，即其区域的时间灵活性和整合性。我们发现，与对照组相比，AUD 组小脑与额顶执行控制（F=7.01，p（FDR）=0.028）和腹侧注意（F=7.35，p（FDR）=0.028）网络之间的 FC 变异性显著增加。此外，AUD 组小脑的灵活性显著降低（F=8.61，p（FDR）=0.028），整合性显著增加（F=9.11，p（FDR）=0.028）。最后，在一项探索性分析中，我们发现 AUD 中存在经典大规模网络动力学的分布式变化。总体而言，这项研究为主要脑-小脑网络中与 AUD 相关的 FC 动态改变提供了证据。这种模式对解释该障碍的发展和维持以及提高我们对小脑在成瘾中的参与的理解具有重要意义。
