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Roger K, Vannasing P, Tremblay J, Bringas Vega ML, Bryce CP, Rabinowitz A, Valdes-Sosa PA, Galler JR, Gallagher A. Early childhood malnutrition impairs adult resting brain function using near-infrared spectroscopy. Front Hum Neurosci 2024; 17:1287488. [PMID: 38298205 PMCID: PMC10827877 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1287488] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/01/2023] [Accepted: 12/15/2023] [Indexed: 02/02/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction Early childhood malnutrition affects 200+ million children under 5 years of age worldwide and is associated with persistent cognitive, behavioral and psychiatric impairments in adulthood. However, very few studies have investigated the long-term effects of childhood protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) on brain function using a functional hemodynamic brain imaging technique. Objective and methods This study aims to investigate functional brain network alterations using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in adults, aged 45-51 years, from the Barbados Nutrition Study (BNS) who suffered from a single episode of malnutrition restricted to their first year of life (n = 26) and controls (n = 29). A total of 55 individuals from the BNS cohort underwent NIRS recording at rest. Results and discussion Using functional connectivity and permutation analysis, we found patterns of increased Pearson's correlation with a specific vulnerability of the frontal cortex in the PEM group (ps < 0.05). Using a graph theoretical approach, mixed ANCOVAs showed increased segregation (ps = 0.0303 and 0.0441) and decreased integration (p = 0.0498) in previously malnourished participants compared to healthy controls. These results can be interpreted as a compensatory mechanism to preserve cognitive functions, that could also be related to premature or pathological brain aging. To our knowledge, this study is the first NIRS neuroimaging study revealing brain function alterations in middle adulthood following early childhood malnutrition limited to the first year of life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kassandra Roger
- LION Lab, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Phetsamone Vannasing
- LION Lab, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Julie Tremblay
- LION Lab, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Maria L. Bringas Vega
- MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
| | | | - Arielle Rabinowitz
- Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Pedro Antonio Valdes-Sosa
- MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
| | - Janina R. Galler
- Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, MassGeneral Hospital for Children, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Anne Gallagher
- LION Lab, Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
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Ahmed MAO, Satar YA, Darwish EM, Zanaty EA. Synergistic integration of Multi-View Brain Networks and advanced machine learning techniques for auditory disorders diagnostics. Brain Inform 2024; 11:3. [PMID: 38219249 PMCID: PMC10788326 DOI: 10.1186/s40708-023-00214-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2023] [Accepted: 12/06/2023] [Indexed: 01/16/2024] Open
Abstract
In the field of audiology, achieving accurate discrimination of auditory impairments remains a formidable challenge. Conditions such as deafness and tinnitus exert a substantial impact on patients' overall quality of life, emphasizing the urgent need for precise and efficient classification methods. This study introduces an innovative approach, utilizing Multi-View Brain Network data acquired from three distinct cohorts: 51 deaf patients, 54 with tinnitus, and 42 normal controls. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recording data were meticulously collected, focusing on 70 electrodes attached to an end-to-end key with 10 regions of interest (ROI). This data is synergistically integrated with machine learning algorithms. To tackle the inherently high-dimensional nature of brain connectivity data, principal component analysis (PCA) is employed for feature reduction, enhancing interpretability. The proposed approach undergoes evaluation using ensemble learning techniques, including Random Forest, Extra Trees, Gradient Boosting, and CatBoost. The performance of the proposed models is scrutinized across a comprehensive set of metrics, encompassing cross-validation accuracy (CVA), precision, recall, F1-score, Kappa, and Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC). The proposed models demonstrate statistical significance and effectively diagnose auditory disorders, contributing to early detection and personalized treatment, thereby enhancing patient outcomes and quality of life. Notably, they exhibit reliability and robustness, characterized by high Kappa and MCC values. This research represents a significant advancement in the intersection of audiology, neuroimaging, and machine learning, with transformative implications for clinical practice and care.
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Affiliation(s)
- Muhammad Atta Othman Ahmed
- Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computers and Information, Luxor University, 85951, Luxor, Egypt.
| | - Yasser Abdel Satar
- Mathematics Department, Faculty of Science, Sohag University, 82511, Sohag, Egypt
| | - Eed M Darwish
- Physics Department, College of Science, Taibah University, Medina, 41411, Saudi Arabia
- Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Sohag University, 82524, Sohag, Egypt
| | - Elnomery A Zanaty
- Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence, Sohag University, 82511, Sohag, Egypt
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Mellema CJ, Montillo AA. Novel machine learning approaches for improving the reproducibility and reliability of functional and effective connectivity from functional MRI. J Neural Eng 2023; 20:066023. [PMID: 37963396 DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/ad0c5f] [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: 07/06/2023] [Accepted: 11/14/2023] [Indexed: 11/16/2023]
Abstract
Objective.New measures of human brain connectivity are needed to address gaps in the existing measures and facilitate the study of brain function, cognitive capacity, and identify early markers of human disease. Traditional approaches to measure functional connectivity (FC) between pairs of brain regions in functional MRI, such as correlation and partial correlation, fail to capture nonlinear aspects in the regional associations. We propose a new machine learning based measure of FC (ML.FC) which efficiently captures linear and nonlinear aspects.Approach.To capture directed information flow between brain regions, effective connectivity (EC) metrics, including dynamic causal modeling and structural equation modeling have been used. However, these methods are impractical to compute across the many regions of the whole brain. Therefore, we propose two new EC measures. The first, a machine learning based measure of effective connectivity (ML.EC), measures nonlinear aspects across the entire brain. The second, Structurally Projected Granger Causality (SP.GC) adapts Granger Causal connectivity to efficiently characterize and regularize the whole brain EC connectome to respect underlying biological structural connectivity. The proposed measures are compared to traditional measures in terms ofreproducibilityand theability to predict individual traitsin order to demonstrate these measures' internal validity. We use four repeat scans of the same individuals from the Human Connectome Project and measure the ability of the measures to predict individual subject physiologic and cognitive traits.Main results.The proposed new FC measure ofML.FCattains high reproducibility (mean intra-subjectR2of 0.44), while the proposed EC measure ofSP.GCattains the highest predictive power (meanR2across prediction tasks of 0.66).Significance.The proposed methods are highly suitable for achieving high reproducibility and predictiveness and demonstrate their strong potential for future neuroimaging studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cooper J Mellema
- Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics, Dallas, TX, United States of America
- Biomedical Engineering Department, Dallas, TX, United States of America
- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas, TX 75390, United States of America
| | - Albert A Montillo
- Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics, Dallas, TX, United States of America
- Biomedical Engineering Department, Dallas, TX, United States of America
- Advanced Imaging Research Center, Dallas, TX, United States of America
- Radiology Department, Dallas, TX, United States of America
- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas, TX 75390, United States of America
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Cui H, Dai W, Zhu Y, Kan X, Gu AAC, Lukemire J, Zhan L, He L, Guo Y, Yang C. BrainGB: A Benchmark for Brain Network Analysis With Graph Neural Networks. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2023; 42:493-506. [PMID: 36318557 PMCID: PMC10079627 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2022.3218745] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Mapping the connectome of the human brain using structural or functional connectivity has become one of the most pervasive paradigms for neuroimaging analysis. Recently, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) motivated from geometric deep learning have attracted broad interest due to their established power for modeling complex networked data. Despite their superior performance in many fields, there has not yet been a systematic study of how to design effective GNNs for brain network analysis. To bridge this gap, we present BrainGB, a benchmark for brain network analysis with GNNs. BrainGB standardizes the process by (1) summarizing brain network construction pipelines for both functional and structural neuroimaging modalities and (2) modularizing the implementation of GNN designs. We conduct extensive experiments on datasets across cohorts and modalities and recommend a set of general recipes for effective GNN designs on brain networks. To support open and reproducible research on GNN-based brain network analysis, we host the BrainGB website at https://braingb.us with models, tutorials, examples, as well as an out-of-box Python package. We hope that this work will provide useful empirical evidence and offer insights for future research in this novel and promising direction.
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Blevins AS, Bassett DS, Scott EK, Vanwalleghem GC. From calcium imaging to graph topology. Netw Neurosci 2022; 6:1125-1147. [PMID: 38800465 PMCID: PMC11117109 DOI: 10.1162/netn_a_00262] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/17/2022] [Accepted: 06/13/2022] [Indexed: 05/29/2024] Open
Abstract
Systems neuroscience is facing an ever-growing mountain of data. Recent advances in protein engineering and microscopy have together led to a paradigm shift in neuroscience; using fluorescence, we can now image the activity of every neuron through the whole brain of behaving animals. Even in larger organisms, the number of neurons that we can record simultaneously is increasing exponentially with time. This increase in the dimensionality of the data is being met with an explosion of computational and mathematical methods, each using disparate terminology, distinct approaches, and diverse mathematical concepts. Here we collect, organize, and explain multiple data analysis techniques that have been, or could be, applied to whole-brain imaging, using larval zebrafish as an example model. We begin with methods such as linear regression that are designed to detect relations between two variables. Next, we progress through network science and applied topological methods, which focus on the patterns of relations among many variables. Finally, we highlight the potential of generative models that could provide testable hypotheses on wiring rules and network progression through time, or disease progression. While we use examples of imaging from larval zebrafish, these approaches are suitable for any population-scale neural network modeling, and indeed, to applications beyond systems neuroscience. Computational approaches from network science and applied topology are not limited to larval zebrafish, or even to systems neuroscience, and we therefore conclude with a discussion of how such methods can be applied to diverse problems across the biological sciences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ann S. Blevins
- Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Dani S. Bassett
- Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Neurology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, USA
| | - Ethan K. Scott
- Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- Department of Anatomy and Physiology, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Gilles C. Vanwalleghem
- Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience (DANDRITE), Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
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