Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Image Processing, School of Information Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China.
College of Information Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China.
Addict Biol. 2023 Dec;28(12):e13347. doi: 10.1111/adb.13347.
Previous studies demonstrated that reward circuit plays an important role in smoking. The differences of functional and structural connectivity were found among several brain regions such as thalamus and frontal lobe. However, few studies focused on functional connectivity (FC) in whole-brain voxel level of young smokers. In this study, intrinsic connectivity contrast (ICC) was used to perform voxel-based whole-brain analyses in 55 young smokers and 55 matched non-smokers to identify brain regions with significant group differences. ICC results showed that the connectivity of young smokers in medial frontal cortex (MedFC), supramarginal gyrus anterior division left (L_aSMG), central opercular cortex left (L_CO) and middle frontal gyrus left (L_MidFG) showed a significantly lower trend compared with the non-smokers. The seed-based FC analysis about MedFC indicated that young smokers showed reduced connectivity between the MedFC and left hippocampus, left amygdala compared to non-smokers. Correlation analysis showed that the ICC of MedFC in young smokers was significantly negatively correlated with Fagerstrom test for nicotine dependence (FTND) and Questionnaire on Smoking Urges (QSU). The FC between the MedFC and left hippocampus, left amygdala was significantly negatively correlated with Pack_years. The mediation analysis indicated that ICC of MedFC completely mediated FTND and QSU of young smokers. The results suggest that nicotine accumulation may affect the communication of the frontal lobe with the whole brain to some extent, leading to changes in smoking cravings. The above research also provides in-depth insights into the mechanism of adolescent smoking addiction and related intervention treatment.
先前的研究表明,奖励回路在吸烟中起着重要作用。在丘脑和额叶等几个大脑区域中发现了功能和结构连接的差异。然而,很少有研究关注年轻吸烟者全脑的功能连接(FC)。在这项研究中,使用内在连接对比(ICC)对 55 名年轻吸烟者和 55 名匹配的不吸烟者进行全脑基于体素的分析,以确定具有显著组间差异的大脑区域。ICC 结果表明,与不吸烟者相比,年轻吸烟者的内侧额皮质(MedFC)、额上回前部分左侧(L_aSMG)、中央脑岛皮质左侧(L_CO)和额中回左侧(L_MidFG)的连接呈现出显著降低的趋势。关于 MedFC 的基于种子的 FC 分析表明,与不吸烟者相比,年轻吸烟者的 MedFC 与左侧海马体、左侧杏仁核之间的连接性降低。相关性分析表明,年轻吸烟者 MedFC 的 ICC 与尼古丁依赖测试(FTND)和吸烟欲望问卷(QSU)呈显著负相关。MedFC 与左侧海马体、左侧杏仁核之间的 FC 与吸烟包年数呈显著负相关。中介分析表明,MedFC 的 ICC 完全介导了年轻吸烟者的 FTND 和 QSU。结果表明,尼古丁积累可能在某种程度上影响额叶与整个大脑的通讯,导致吸烟欲望的变化。上述研究还深入探讨了青少年吸烟成瘾的机制及相关干预治疗。