Functional Imaging of Neurodevelopmental & Neurodegenerative Disorders
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Monday 7 May 2012
Room 202  10:45 - 12:45 Moderators: Hanzhang Lu, James J. Pekar

10:45 0026.   Disruption of functional organization within the primary motor cortex in children with autism
Mary Beth Nebel1,2, Suresh E Joel1,2, John Muschelli1,3, Anita D Barber1,2, Brian S Caffo3, James J Pekar1,2, and Stewart H Mostofsky1,2
1Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, 2Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, 3Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

 
Children with autism (ASD) experience difficulty performing motor skills, which may reflect abnormal connectivity within networks underlying motor control and learning. Motivated by the utility of clustering algorithms in visualizing functional organization within the brain, we present a parcellation of a key area of the motor network, the primary motor cortex (M1), in both typically developing (TD) children and children with ASD and introduce methods for selecting the number of clusters, matching clusters across groups and testing group differences. Observed group differences in M1 organization suggest that developmental segregation of upper and lower limb control may be delayed in ASD.

 
10:57 0027.   Whole brain connectivity analysis using resting state functional MRI in pediatric TSC patients
Alireza Akhondi-Asl1, Arne Hans1, Benoit Scherrer1, Jurriaan M. Peters1, and Simon K. Warfield1
1Computational Radiology Laboratory, Children's Hospital, Harvard medical school, Boston, MA, United States

 

11:09 0028.   Abnormal emotional processing in Multiple Sclerosis: an fMRI investigation
Barbara Basile1,2, Ugo Nocentini3, Carlo Caltagirone3, and Marco Bozzali1
1Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, 2School of Cognitive Psychotherapy, Rome, Italy, 3Clinical and Behavioral Neurology, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

 
Psychopathological symptoms like anger, depression and disphoria are frequently observed in patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), but yet their neuronal substrate has been little investigated. The aim of this fMRI study was to assess the basis of abnormal emotional processing in MS, with a particular focus on anger and joy. We show that patients with MS activate more than healthy subjects when exposed to emotional stimuli (facial expressions), thus confirming the occurrence of an abnormal emotion processing. We suggest that these abnormalities might represent the neurobiological substrate for psychopathological symptoms.

 
11:21 0029.   Resting state fMRI helps to understand the pathophysiology of sensory-motor and cognitive disabilities in MS
Barbara Basile1,2, Maura Castelli3, Fabrizia Monteleone3, Diego Centonze3, Carlo Caltagirone4, and Marco Bozzali5
1Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, Italy, 2School of Cognitive Psychotherapy, Rome, Italy, 3Neuroscience, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy, 4Clinical and Behavioral Neurology, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, 5Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

 
Resting-state fMRI was used here to investigate changes in functional connectivity (FC) within two critical networks, namely the sensory-motor and the default-mode-network, in patients with relapsing-remitting (RR-) and secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS). Overall, MS patients compared to healthy controls, revealed a compensatory increase of FC in both networks. Interestingly, the differences in FC observed in the two networks, between RR- and SPMS patients, indicate a relationship between their capability of recruiting additional brain areas (possible compensation mechanism to contrast the accumulation of brain tissue damage) and the severity in motor and cognitive disabilities.

 
11:33 0030.   
Vessel-reactivity-corrected fMRI reveals novel patterns of age-related changes in brain activity
Peiying Liu1, Andrew C. Hebrank2, Karen M. Rodrigue2, Kristen M. Kennedy2, Denise C. Park2, and Hanzhang Lu1
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States, 2Center for Vital Longevity, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, Texas, United States

 
Cognitive aging studies using BOLD fMRI have revealed a wealth of information about the aging brain. However, few previous studies have considered the decline of brain vascular health with age as confounding factor. We conducted the first cognitive aging study in lifespan that interpreted fMRI findings in the context of vascular changes. Our observations provide strong evidence of a need to re-examine previous fMRI aging literature and suggest that previous studies may have over-estimated age-related decline while under-estimating the extent of compensatory over-recruitment. The reactivity-corrected fMRI data suggested no evidence of age-related decline in neural activity under similar task performance.

 
11:45 0031.   Striatum-Motor Network Functional Connectivity Deficits in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis:A Resting State fMRI Study
Ming Zhang1, Pan Lin2, Chenwang Jin1, Cuiping Mao1, Chen Niu1, ZhiGang Min1, Jingxia Dang3, Qiaoting Jin3, and Xin Liu2
1Department of Medical Imaging, the First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College,Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, shaanxi, China, 2Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Education Ministry, Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, 3Department of Neurology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College,Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, shaanxi, China

 
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by deficits in motor systems.Striatum-motor network has found to play important role in motor control.Whether the fluctuations of resting fMRI signal within striatum-motor network funtional connectivity is associated with abnormal neuronal activity remains unclear.In this study, we specifically investigate wheather patients with ALS is associated with dysfunction of interregion functional connectivity in striatum-motor network that support motor function.

 
11:57 0032.   Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Prodromal Huntington’s Disease
Katherine A Koenig1, Stephen M Rao2, Mark J Lowe1, Jian Lin1, Deborah L Harrington3, Dawei Liu4, Ken Sakaie1, and Jane S Paulsen5
1Imaging Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, United States, 2Schey Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, United States, 3Research, Neurology, and Radiology Services, Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, United States, 4Department of Biostatistics, The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, United States, 5Department of Psychiatry, The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, United States

 
Functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI), measured from low-frequency fluctuations in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) timeseries during rest, has the potential to identify disruptions in intrinsic brain connectivity in the prodromal stages of Huntington’s disease (HD). The current study evaluated differences in 8 gene-negative subjects, 8 gene-positive subjects who were close to diagnosis of manifest HD, and 8 gene-positive subjects who were far from diagnosis of manifest HD. Significant group differences in the strength of connectivity from the left insula and the right supplementary motor cortex represent the first report of resting-state fcMRI differences in prodromal HD individuals.

 
12:09 0033.   Accounting for Movement Increases Sensitivity in Detecting Brain Activity in Parkinson's Disease
Štefan Holiga1, Harald E Möller1, Tomáš Sieger2,3, Matthias L Schroeter1,4, Robert Jech2, and Karsten Mueller1
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, 2Department of Neurology and Center of Clinical Neuroscience, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, 3Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic,4Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, Leipzig, Germany

 

12:21 0034.   Spectrogram and BOLD analysis of stop consonants in Parkinsonism
Mohit Saxena1, Senthil S Kumaran2, Vinay Goyal1, Vaishna Narang3, and Madhuri Behari1
1Department of Neurology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi, India, 2Department of N.M.R., All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi, India, 3The School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India

 
Parkinsonism is associated with speech dysfunction. The study evaluates the abnormalities in articulatory planning, execution and their correlation in Parkinson’s disease (PD), Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) with the BOLD activation pattern, to understand the speech deficits in these disorders.

 
12:33 0035.   Altered functional network in different stage of patients with Parkinson's disease: evidence from resting-state fMRI
Qin Chen1, Pinglei Pan1, Wei Song1, Hehan Tang2, Dong Zhou1, Qiyong Gong2, and Huifang Shang1
1Department of Neurology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, 2Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

 
Recent studies have applied functional MRI to investigate the altered brain function on PD patients[2,3], but it still remains unclear about how the neural network changes in different stages of PD. The present study aims to examine alterations pattern of regional and neural network function in PD patients in different stages by using resting state fMRI. The result indicated that a complementary hyperactivity neural network in the early stage shifted to a normal level or even decreased function in the late stage in patients with PD.