Functional imaging of emotion reactivity in opiate-dependent borderline personality disorder.

Opiate dependence (OD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD), separately and together, are significant public health problems with poor treatment outcomes. BPD is associated with difficulties in emotion regulation, and brain-imaging studies in BPD individuals indicate differential activation in prefrontal cingulate cortices and their interactions with limbic regions. Likewise, a similar network is implicated in drug cue responsivity in substance abusers. The present, preliminary study used functional MRI to examine activation of this network in comorbid OD/BPD participants when engaged in an “oddball” task that required attention to a target in the context of emotionally negative distractors. Twelve male OD/BPD participants and 12 male healthy controls participated. All OD/BPD participants were taking the opiate replacement medication Suboxone, and a subset of participants was positive for substances of abuse on scan day. Relative to controls, OD/BPD participants demonstrated reduced activation to negative stimuli in the amygdala and anterior cingulate. Unlike previous studies that demonstrated hyperresponsivity in neural regions associated with affective processing in individuals with BPD versus healthy controls, comorbid OD/BPD participants were hyporesponsive to emotional cues. Future studies that also include BPD-only and OD-only groups are necessary to help clarify the individual and potentially synergistic effects of these two conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exercise improves executive function and achievement and alters brain activation in overweight children: A randomized, controlled trial.

Objective: This experiment tested the hypothesis that exercise would improve executive function. Design: Sedentary, overweight 7- to 11-year-old children (N = 171, 56% girls, 61% Black, M ± SD age = 9.3 ± 1.0 years, body mass index [BMI] = 26 ± 4.6 kg/m2, BMI z-score = 2.1 ± 0.4) were randomized to 13 ± 1.6 weeks of an exercise program (20 or 40 min/day), or a control condition. Main Outcome Measures: Blinded, standardized psychological evaluations (Cognitive Assessment System and Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement III) assessed cognition and academic achievement. Functional MRI measured brain activity during executive function tasks. Results: Intent to treat analysis revealed dose-response benefits of exercise on executive function and mathematics achievement. Preliminary evidence of increased bilateral prefrontal cortex activity and reduced bilateral posterior parietal cortex activity attributable to exercise was also observed. Conclusion: Consistent with results obtained in older adults, a specific improvement on executive function and brain activation changes attributable to exercise were observed. The cognitive and achievement results add evidence of dose-response and extend experimental evidence into childhood. This study provides information on an educational outcome. Besides its importance for maintaining weight and reducing health risks during a childhood obesity epidemic, physical activity may prove to be a simple, important method of enhancing aspects of children's mental functioning that are central to cognitive development. This information may persuade educators to implement vigorous physical activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A novel method for spatio-temporal pattern analysis of brain fMRI data

1 Introduction Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive brain imaging technique which has been utilized in brain function researches since the early 1990s[1]. However, it is often difficult to do analysis in fMRI data because of the low signal to noise ratio (SNR) (about 2%—4% with 1.5T magnetic field strength) and the delay within the true neural activity and the stimuli-induced signal dynamic responses. The prevalent methods applied to fMRI data could be divided i…     

fMRI动态功能网络构建及其在脑部疾病识别中的应用

如何从复杂的fMRI数据中提取 丰富的大脑信息是提高脑部疾病识别精度的关键。传统的静息态功能磁共振成像分析中,功能连接网络被认为是稳定不变的。提出一种基于成组独立成分分析的构建动态功能连接网络的方法,并通过该网络来获取功能网络本身的动态特性。首先,利用成组独立成分分析法提取fMRI数据的空间独立成分作为网络节点,并通过滑动时间窗的方法获取窗口时间序列,构建动态功能连接网络。以动态功能网络作为特征,对精神分裂症患者和正常被试数据进行分类识别。实验结果表明,该方法能够获取fMRI数据的时间维度信息,提高识别效果,在一定程度上能为临床诊断提供客观参照。     

Ellipsoidal support vector clustering for functional MRI analysis

As an exploratory approach, the clustering of fMRI time series has proved its effectiveness in analyzing the functional MRI, especially in the detection of activated regions. Due to the arbitrary distribution of fMRI time series in the temporal domain, imposing simple assumption on the data structure usually could be misleading and limit the detector's performance. Therefore, a true data-driven clustering algorithm that adapts to the data structure is preferred, and only high-level control over the clustering procedure is desired. Support vector clustering (SVC) is a suitable one in some extent because of its advantages, such as no cluster shape restriction, no need to explicitly specify the number of clusters, and the mechanism in outlier elimination. In this work, we propose an extension of the SVC to step further toward a data-sensitive detector. This approach is named as ellipsoidal support vector clustering (ESVC). To be robust to noise, the clustering is performed on features extracted from the fMRI time series via Fourier transform. Experimental results on simulated and real data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of incorporating data structure in clustering fMRI time series.     

基于智能计算的脑机制研究

解析脑认知原理和脑疾病的发病机制已是当下脑科学研究的热点。智能计算在脑影像领域的应用可为认知心理学研究、脑疾病的识别和干预以及类脑智能理论研究等提供借鉴和参考。本文介绍利用智能影像计算方法在识别脑认知网络成分、构建脑有向连接模型、预测认知行为变化、构建心理过程神经表征等方面的工作,并对未来相关研究进行展望。     

Small-world brain functional network altered by watching 2D/3DTV

With the development of display technology, the healthy problems caused by watching 2D/3DTV have received more and more attention. This paper utilized resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the changes of small-world brain network before and after one-hour 2D/3DTV watching, and explored the brain fatigue mechanism caused by watching 2D/3DTV. We conclude that one-hour watching of 2DTV will not increase the burden of brain. On the contrary, one-hour watching of 3DTV requires the brain to regulate the efficiency of brain areas, such as temporal lobe and occipital lobe, which may explain the fact that watching 3DTV can easier cause brain fatigue than watching 2DTV.     

Intracranial functional MR angiography in humans

Functional MR angiography (fMRA) images have been generated from the brain of healthy volunteers, in response to a hand motor task. Two sets of 3D phase-contrast MR images were, therefore, acquired, one during a resting and one during a task activation period. The MR images measured during rest were subtracted from those measured during task performance. The fMRA images were eventually obtained by calculating maximum intensity projections from the set of subtraction images. The results confirm earlier observations that there is a significant functional response from pial veins to motor activity.     

脑激活任务区分度的分析及应用研究

大脑在执行不同类型任务时激活模式各不相同,变化很大,各个脑区的变化程度也不同。据此,提出任务区分度计算这一全新的方法。用相似性度量对任务态功能磁共振成像（functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging,fMRI）分析,衡量大脑在执行不同条件时各个脑区激活模式的区分程度,揭示大脑各个区域对任务的表征能力。实验对正常人和狂躁症患者记忆提取任务的fMRI数据进行分析,使用皮尔逊相关分析、余弦相似度分析和欧几里德距离计算3种常用的相似性度量方法,并计算各个脑区的任务区分度。结果表明区分度较高的脑区参与记忆、注意和视觉信息等功能,表明了该方法的准确性和科学性。狂躁症患者在负责记忆和注意等脑区的任务区分度较正常人低,表明患者脑功能受损。此外,研究还发现基于皮尔逊相关分析的区分度计算表现较好。通过与SVM方法的对比证明了该方法在区分不同任务的激活模式时的优越性。综上,基于相似性度量的脑激活任务区分度的方法能够适用于任务态fMRI分析及其相应的脑功能分析。     

Analyzing fatigue in prolonged watching of 3DTV with ReHo approach

Fatigue caused by the prolonged watching of 3DTV has been paid great attention about the safety for viewers. We used regional homogeneity (ReHo) to measure the local synchronization of resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging signals both before and after watching 2D or 3D television. Twenty normal subjects were all measured four times: scans before watching television (3D‐Pre/2D‐Pre) and immediately after watching television for 1 h (3D‐Post/2D‐Post). The variation of ReHo was investigated in 2D/3D groups, and then the influence of watching 2D/3D TV on the spectators was estimated. Compared with the 3D‐Pre, the 3D‐Post showed significantly higher ReHo in the right inferior occipital gyrus (BA18/19) and right middle occipital gyrus (BA18/19), left postcentral gyrus (BA2/3/4/7), and small area of BA9/10 in left frontal lobe. Additionally, increased ReHo regions in the 2D‐Post was observed in the left medial frontal gyrus (BA9/10/32), left cingulate gyrus (BA24), and right anterior cingulate (BA32) as compared with the 2D‐Pre. For the 2D group, subjects mainly feel mental fatigue, which could be caused by prolonged attention. For the 3D group, watching TV primarily causes visual fatigue because of the constant change of depth of focus and mild mental fatigue. The study indicates the adverse effects of 3DTV on visual function.