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Cai J, Wang Y, McKeown MJ. Advances in functional and structural imaging of the brainstem: implications for disease. Curr Opin Neurol 2024:00019052-990000000-00175. [PMID: 38884636 DOI: 10.1097/wco.0000000000001284] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/18/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE OF REVIEW The brainstem's complex anatomy and relatively small size means that structural and functional assessment of this structure is done less frequently compared to other brain areas. However, recent years have seen substantial progress in brainstem imaging, enabling more detailed investigations into its structure and function, as well as its role in neuropathology. RECENT FINDINGS Advancements in ultrahigh field MRI technology have allowed for unprecedented spatial resolution in brainstem imaging, facilitating the new creation of detailed brainstem-specific atlases. Methodological improvements have significantly enhanced the accuracy of physiological (cardiac and respiratory) noise correction within brainstem imaging studies. These technological and methodological advancements have allowed for in-depth analyses of the brainstem's anatomy, including quantitative assessments and examinations of structural connectivity within both gray and white matter. Furthermore, functional studies, including assessments of activation patterns and functional connectivity, have revealed the brainstem's roles in both specialized functions and broader neural integration. Notably, these investigations have identified alterations in brainstem structure and function associated with various neurological disorders. SUMMARY The aforementioned developments have allowed for a greater appreciation of the importance of the brainstem in the wider context of neuroscience and clinical neurology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiayue Cai
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Biomedical Measurements and Ultrasound Imaging, School of Biomedical Engineering, Shenzhen University Medical School, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Yuheng Wang
- School of Biomedical Engineering
- Faculty of Medicine
| | - Martin J McKeown
- School of Biomedical Engineering
- Faculty of Medicine
- Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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2
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Del Mauro G, Wang Z. Associations of Brain Entropy Estimated by Resting State fMRI With Physiological Indices, Body Mass Index, and Cognition. J Magn Reson Imaging 2024; 59:1697-1707. [PMID: 37578314 PMCID: PMC10864678 DOI: 10.1002/jmri.28948] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/12/2023] [Revised: 07/27/2023] [Accepted: 07/28/2023] [Indexed: 08/15/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND In recent years, resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI)-based brain entropy (BEN) has gained increasing interest as a tool to characterize brain activity. While previous studies indicate that BEN is correlated with cognition, it remains unclear whether BEN is influenced by other factors that typically affect brain activity measured by fMRI. PURPOSE To investigate the relationship between BEN and physiological indices, including respiratory rate (RR), heart rate (HR), systolic blood pressure (s-BP), and body mass index (BMI), and to investigate whether and to what extent the relationship between BEN and cognition is influenced by physiological variables. STUDY TYPE Retrospective. SUBJECTS One thousand two hundred six healthy subjects (mean age: 28.83 ± 3.69 years; 550 male) with rsfMRI datasets selected from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE Multiband echo planar imaging (EPI) sequence at 3.0 Tesla. ASSESSMENT Neurocognitive, physical health (RR, HR, s-BP, BMI), and rsfMRI data were retrieved from the HCP datasets. Neurocognition was measured through the total cognition composite (TCC) score provided by HCP. BEN maps were calculated from rsfMRI data. STATISTICAL TESTS Multiple regression models, pheight-family wise error (FWE) < 0.05 and pcluster-FWE < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS BEN was negatively associated with RR (T-thresholds ranging from 4.75 to 4.8; r-threshold = |0.15|) and positively associated with s-BP and BMI (T-thresholds ranging from 4.75 to 4.8; r-threshold = |0.15|) in areas overlapping with the default mode network. After controlling the physiological effects, BEN still showed regional associations with TCC, including negative associations (T-thresholds = 3.09; r-threshold = |0.1|) in the fronto-parietal cortex and positive associations (T-thresholds = 3.09; r-threshold = |0.1|) in the sensorimotor system (motor network and the limbic system). DATA CONCLUSIONS RR negatively affects rsfMRI-derived BEN, while s-BP and BMI positively affect BEN. The positive associations between BEN and cognition in the motor network and the limbic system might indicate a facilitation of information processing in the sensorimotor system. EVIDENCE LEVEL 3 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 3.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gianpaolo Del Mauro
- Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
| | - Ze Wang
- Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
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Shokri-Kojori E, Tomasi D, Demiral SB, Wang GJ, Volkow ND. An autonomic mode of brain activity. Prog Neurobiol 2023; 229:102510. [PMID: 37516341 PMCID: PMC10591458 DOI: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2023.102510] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2023] [Revised: 05/11/2023] [Accepted: 07/18/2023] [Indexed: 07/31/2023]
Abstract
The relevance of interactions between autonomic and central nervous systems remains unclear for human brain function and health, particularly when both systems are challenged under sleep deprivation (SD). We measured brain activity (with fMRI), pulse and respiratory signals, and baseline brain amyloid beta burden (with PET) in healthy participants. We found that SD relative to rested wakefulness (RW) resulted in a significant increase in synchronized low frequency (LF, < 0.1 Hz) activity in an autonomically-related network (AN), including dorsal attention, visual, and sensorimotor regions, which we previously found to have consistent temporal coupling with LF pulse signal changes (regulated by sympathetic tone). SD resulted in a significant phase coherence between the LF component of the pulse signal and a medial network with peak effects in the midbrain reticular formation, and between LF component of the respiratory variations (regulated by respiratory motor output) and a cerebellar network. The LF power of AN during SD was significantly and independently correlated with pulse-medial network and respiratory-cerebellar network phase coherences (total adjusted R2 = 0.78). Higher LF power of AN during SD (but not RW) was associated with lower amyloid beta burden (Cohen's d = 0.8). In sum, SD triggered an autonomic mode of synchronized brain activity that was associated with distinct autonomic-central interactions. Findings highlight the direct relevance of global cortical synchronization to brain clearance mechanisms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ehsan Shokri-Kojori
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
| | - Dardo Tomasi
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Sukru B Demiral
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Gene-Jack Wang
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Nora D Volkow
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
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Kassinopoulos M, Rolandi N, Alphan L, Harper RM, Oliveira J, Scott C, Kozák LR, Guye M, Lemieux L, Diehl B. Brain Connectivity Correlates of Breathing and Cardiac Irregularities in SUDEP: A Resting-State fMRI Study. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2023:2023.05.19.541412. [PMID: 37293113 PMCID: PMC10245782 DOI: 10.1101/2023.05.19.541412] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is the leading cause of premature mortality among people with epilepsy. Evidence from witnessed and monitored SUDEP cases indicate seizure-induced cardiovascular and respiratory failures; yet, the underlying mechanisms remain obscure. SUDEP occurs often during the night and early morning hours, suggesting that sleep or circadian rhythm-induced changes in physiology contribute to the fatal event. Resting-state fMRI studies have found altered functional connectivity between brain structures involved in cardiorespiratory regulation in later SUDEP cases and in individuals at high-risk of SUDEP. However, those connectivity findings have not been related to changes in cardiovascular or respiratory patterns. Here, we compared fMRI patterns of brain connectivity associated with regular and irregular cardiorespiratory rhythms in SUDEP cases with those of living epilepsy patients of varying SUDEP risk, and healthy controls. We analysed resting-state fMRI data from 98 patients with epilepsy (9 who subsequently succumbed to SUDEP, 43 categorized as low SUDEP risk (no tonic-clonic seizures (TCS) in the year preceding the fMRI scan), and 46 as high SUDEP risk (>3 TCS in the year preceding the scan)) and 25 healthy controls. The global signal amplitude (GSA), defined as the moving standard deviation of the fMRI global signal, was used to identify periods with regular ('low state') and irregular ('high state') cardiorespiratory rhythms. Correlation maps were derived from seeds in twelve regions with a key role in autonomic or respiratory regulation, for the low and high states. Following principal component analysis, component weights were compared between the groups. We found widespread alterations in connectivity of precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex in epilepsy compared to controls, in the low state (regular cardiorespiratory activity). In the low state, and to a lesser degree in the high state, reduced anterior insula connectivity (mainly with anterior and posterior cingulate cortex) in epilepsy appeared, relative to healthy controls. For SUDEP cases, the insula connectivity differences were inversely related to the interval between the fMRI scan and death. The findings suggest that anterior insula connectivity measures may provide a biomarker of SUDEP risk. The neural correlates of autonomic brain structures associated with different cardiorespiratory rhythms may shed light on the mechanisms underlying terminal apnea observed in SUDEP.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michalis Kassinopoulos
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Epilepsy Society, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
| | - Nicolo Rolandi
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Epilepsy Society, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
| | - Laren Alphan
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Ronald M. Harper
- UCLA Brain Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, United States
- Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Joana Oliveira
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, UCLH, London, United Kingdom
| | - Catherine Scott
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, UCLH, London, United Kingdom
| | - Lajos R. Kozák
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Department of Neuroradiology, Medical Imaging Centre, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Maxime Guye
- Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, CRMBM UMR 7339, Marseille, France
- APHM, Hôpital de la Timone, CEMEREM, Marseille, France
| | - Louis Lemieux
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Epilepsy Society, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
| | - Beate Diehl
- UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Epilepsy Society, Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom
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Effects of Physiological Signal Removal on Resting-State Functional MRI Metrics. Brain Sci 2022; 13:brainsci13010008. [PMID: 36671990 PMCID: PMC9856687 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13010008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2022] [Revised: 12/02/2022] [Accepted: 12/12/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Resting-state fMRIs (rs-fMRIs) have been widely used for investigation of diverse brain functions, including brain cognition. The rs-fMRI has easily elucidated rs-fMRI metrics, such as the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC), and degree centrality (DC). To increase the applicability of these metrics, higher reliability is required by reducing confounders that are not related to the functional connectivity signal. Many previous studies already demonstrated the effects of physiological artifact removal from rs-fMRI data, but few have evaluated the effect on rs-fMRI metrics. In this study, we examined the effect of physiological noise correction on the most common rs-fMRI metrics. We calculated the intraclass correlation coefficient of repeated measurements on parcellated brain areas by applying physiological noise correction based on the RETROICOR method. Then, we evaluated the correction effect for five rs-fMRI metrics for the whole brain: FC, fALFF, ReHo, VMHC, and DC. The correction effect depended not only on the brain region, but also on the metric. Among the five metrics, the reliability in terms of the mean value of all ROIs was significantly improved for FC, but it deteriorated for fALFF, with no significant differences for ReHo, VMHC, and DC. Therefore, the decision on whether to perform the physiological correction should be based on the type of metric used.
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Rasheed F, Jonsson D, Nilsson E, Masood TB, Hotz I. Subject-Specific Brain Activity Analysis in fMRI Data Using Merge Trees. 2022 TOPOLOGICAL DATA ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION (TOPOINVIS) 2022. [DOI: 10.1109/topoinvis57755.2022.00018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/01/2023]
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Colenbier N, Marino M, Arcara G, Frederick B, Pellegrino G, Marinazzo D, Ferrazzi G. WHOCARES: WHOle-brain CArdiac signal REgression from highly accelerated simultaneous multi-Slice fMRI acquisitions. J Neural Eng 2022; 19:10.1088/1741-2552/ac8bff. [PMID: 35998568 PMCID: PMC9673276 DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/ac8bff] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2022] [Accepted: 08/23/2022] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Abstract
Objective. To spatio-temporally resolve cardiac signals in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time-series of the human brain using neither external physiological measurements nor ad hoc modelling assumptions.Approach. Cardiac pulsation is a physiological confound of fMRI time-series that introduces spurious signal fluctuations in proximity to blood vessels. fMRI alone is not sufficiently fast to resolve cardiac pulsation. Depending on the ratio between the instantaneous heart-rate and the acquisition sampling frequency (1/TR, with TR being the repetition time), the cardiac signal may alias into the frequency band of neural activation so that its removal through spectral filtering techniques is generally not possible. In this paper, we show that it is feasible to temporally and spatially resolve cardiac signals throughout the brain even when cardiac aliasing occurs by combining fMRI hyper-sampling with simultaneous multislice (SMS) imaging. The technique, which we name WHOle-brain CArdiac signal REgression from highly accelerated simultaneous multi-Slice fMRI acquisitions (WHOCARES), was developed on 695 healthy subjects selected from the Human Connectome Project and its performance validated against the RETROICOR, HAPPY and the pulse oxymeter signal regression methods.Main results.WHOCARES is capable of retrieving voxel-wise cardiac signal regressors. This is achieved without employing external physiological recordings nor through ad hoc modelling assumptions. The performance of WHOCARES was, on average, superior to RETROICOR, HAPPY and the pulse oxymeter regression methods.Significance.WHOCARES holds basis for the reliable mapping of cardiac activity in fMRI time-series. WHOCARES can be employed for the retrospective removal of cardiac noise in publicly available fMRI datasets where physiological recordings are not available. WHOCARES is freely available athttps://github.com/gferrazzi/WHOCARES.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nigel Colenbier
- IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, via Alberoni 70, 30126 Venice, Italy
| | - Marco Marino
- IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, via Alberoni 70, 30126 Venice, Italy
- Research Center for Motor Control and Neuroplasticity, KU Leuven, Leuven, 3001, Belgium
| | - Giorgio Arcara
- IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, via Alberoni 70, 30126 Venice, Italy
| | - Blaise Frederick
- Brain Imaging Center, McLean Hospital, 115 Mill St., Belmont, MA, 02478, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Harvard University Medical School, 25 Shattuck St., Boston, MA, 02115, USA
| | | | - Daniele Marinazzo
- IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, via Alberoni 70, 30126 Venice, Italy
- Department of Data Analysis, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent 9000, Belgium
| | - Giulio Ferrazzi
- IRCCS San Camillo Hospital, via Alberoni 70, 30126 Venice, Italy
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Whittaker JR, Steventon JJ, Venzi M, Murphy K. The Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Cerebral Autoregulation in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:795683. [PMID: 35873811 PMCID: PMC9304653 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.795683] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/15/2021] [Accepted: 06/20/2022] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
The thigh-cuff release (TCR) maneuver is a physiological challenge that is widely used to assess dynamic cerebral autoregulation (dCA). It is often applied in conjunction with Transcranial Doppler ultrasound (TCD), which provides temporal information of the global flow response in the brain. This established method can only yield very limited insights into the regional variability of dCA, whereas functional MRI (fMRI) has the ability to reveal the spatial distribution of flow responses in the brain with high spatial resolution. The aim of this study was to use whole-brain blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of the flow response to the TCR challenge, and thus pave the way toward mapping dCA in the brain. We used a data driven approach to derive a novel basis set that was then used to provide a voxel-wise estimate of the TCR associated haemodynamic response function (HRF TCR ). We found that the HRF TCR evolves with a specific spatiotemporal pattern, with gray and white matter showing an asynchronous response, which likely reflects the anatomical structure of cerebral blood supply. Thus, we propose that TCR challenge fMRI is a promising method for mapping spatial variability in dCA, which will likely prove to be clinically advantageous.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph R. Whittaker
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
- Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Jessica J. Steventon
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
| | - Marcello Venzi
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
| | - Kevin Murphy
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
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A comprehensive investigation of physiologic noise modeling in resting state fMRI; time shifted cardiac noise in EPI and its removal without external physiologic signal measures. Neuroimage 2022; 254:119136. [PMID: 35346840 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119136] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2021] [Revised: 02/18/2022] [Accepted: 03/22/2022] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Hemodynamic cardiac and respiratory-cycle fluctuations are a source of unwanted non-neuronal signal components, often called physiologic noise, in resting state (rs-) fMRI studies. Here, we use image-based retrospective correction of physiological motion (RETROICOR) with externally measured physiologic signals to investigate cardiac and respiratory hemodynamic phase functions reflected in rs-fMRI data. We find that the cardiac phase function is time shifted locally, while the respiratory phase function is described as single, fixed phase form across the brain. In light of these findings, we propose an update to Physiologic EStimation by Temporal ICA (PESTICA), our publically available software package that estimates physiologic signals when external physiologic measures are not available. This update incorporates: 1) auto-selection of slicewise physiologic regressors and generation of physiologic fixed phase regressors with total slices/TR sampling rate, 2) Fourier series expansion of the cardiac fixed phase regressor to account for time delayed cardiac noise 3) removal of cardiac and respiratory noise in imaging data. We compare the efficacy of the updated method to RETROICOR.
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Kassinopoulos M, Mitsis GD. A multi-measure approach for assessing the performance of fMRI preprocessing strategies in resting-state functional connectivity. Magn Reson Imaging 2021; 85:228-250. [PMID: 34715292 DOI: 10.1016/j.mri.2021.10.028] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/18/2021] [Revised: 09/17/2021] [Accepted: 10/17/2021] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
It is well established that head motion and physiological processes (e.g. cardiac and breathing activity) should be taken into consideration when analyzing and interpreting results in fMRI studies. However, even though recent studies aimed to evaluate the performance of different preprocessing pipelines there is still no consensus on the optimal strategy. This is partly due to the fact that the quality control (QC) metrics used to evaluate differences in performance across pipelines have often yielded contradictory results. Furthermore, preprocessing techniques based on physiological recordings or data decomposition techniques (e.g. aCompCor) have not been comprehensively examined. Here, to address the aforementioned issues, we propose a framework that summarizes the scores from eight previously proposed and novel QC metrics to a reduced set of two QC metrics that reflect the signal-to-noise ratio and the reduction in motion artifacts and biases in the preprocessed fMRI data. Using this framework, we evaluate the performance of three commonly used practices on the quality of data: 1) Removal of nuisance regressors from fMRI data, 2) discarding motion-contaminated volumes (i.e., scrubbing) before regression, and 3) low-pass filtering the data and the nuisance regressors before their removal. Using resting-state fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project, we show that the scores of the examined QC metrics improve the most when the global signal (GS) and about 17% of principal components from white matter (WM) are removed from the data. Finally, we observe a small further improvement with low-pass filtering at 0.20 Hz and milder variants of WM denoising, but not with scrubbing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michalis Kassinopoulos
- Graduate Program in Biological and Biomedical Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
| | - Georgios D Mitsis
- Department of Bioengineering, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
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Xifra-Porxas A, Kassinopoulos M, Mitsis GD. Physiological and motion signatures in static and time-varying functional connectivity and their subject identifiability. eLife 2021; 10:e62324. [PMID: 34342582 PMCID: PMC8378847 DOI: 10.7554/elife.62324] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2020] [Accepted: 08/02/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Human brain connectivity yields significant potential as a noninvasive biomarker. Several studies have used fMRI-based connectivity fingerprinting to characterize individual patterns of brain activity. However, it is not clear whether these patterns mainly reflect neural activity or the effect of physiological and motion processes. To answer this question, we capitalize on a large data sample from the Human Connectome Project and rigorously investigate the contribution of the aforementioned processes on functional connectivity (FC) and time-varying FC, as well as their contribution to subject identifiability. We find that head motion, as well as heart rate and breathing fluctuations, induce artifactual connectivity within distinct resting-state networks and that they correlate with recurrent patterns in time-varying FC. Even though the spatiotemporal signatures of these processes yield above-chance levels in subject identifiability, removing their effects at the preprocessing stage improves identifiability, suggesting a neural component underpinning the inter-individual differences in connectivity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alba Xifra-Porxas
- Graduate Program in Biological and Biomedical Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
| | - Michalis Kassinopoulos
- Graduate Program in Biological and Biomedical Engineering, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
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