Functional brain controllability in Parkinson's disease and its association with motor outcomes after deep brain stimulation.

Introduction: Considering the high economic burden and risks of deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgical failure, predicting the motor outcomes of DBS in Parkinson's disease (PD) is of significant importance in clinical decision-making. Functional controllability provides a rationale for combining the abnormal connections of the cortico-striato-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) motor loops and dynamic changes after medication in DBS outcome prediction.

Methods: In this study, we analyzed the association between preoperative delta functional controllability after medication within CSTC loops and motor outcomes of subthalamic nucleus DBS (STN-DBS) and globus pallidus interna DBS (GPi-DBS) and predicted motor outcomes in a Support Vector Regression (SVR) model using the delta controllability of focal regions.

Transdiagnostic white matter controllability deficits across patients with affective and anxiety spectrum disorders.

Background: Affective and anxiety disorders including major depression disorder (MDD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and social anxiety disorder (SAD) are characterized by network dysconnectivity. Network controllability quantifies the capability of specific brain regions to impact functional dynamics based on the underlying structural connectome. This study aimed to investigate transdiagnostic and illness-specific network controllability alterations across these three disorders.

Neurostructural, Neurofunctional, and Clinical Features of Chronic, Untreated Schizophrenia: A Narrative Review.

Studies of individuals with chronic, untreated schizophrenia (CUS) can provide important insights into the natural course of schizophrenia and how antipsychotic pharmacotherapy affects neurobiological aspects of illness course and progression. We systematically review 17 studies on the neuroimaging, cognitive, and epidemiological aspects of CUS individuals. These studies were conducted at the Shanghai Mental Health Center, Institute of Mental Health at Peking University, and Huaxi MR Research Center between 2013 and 2021.

The associations of peripheral interleukin alterations and hippocampal subfield volume deficits in schizophrenia.

The hippocampus is one of the brain regions most vulnerable to inflammatory insults, and the relationships between peripheral inflammation and hippocampal subfields in patients with schizophrenia remain unclear. In this study, forty-six stably medicated patients with schizophrenia and 48 demographically matched healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. The serum levels of IL - 1β, IL-6, IL-10, and IL-12p70 were measured, and 3D high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging was performed.

Applications of MRI in Schizophrenia: Current Progress in Establishing Clinical Utility.

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness that significantly impacts the lives of affected individuals and with increasing mortality rates. Early detection and intervention are crucial for improving outcomes but the lack of validated biomarkers poses great challenges in such efforts. The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in schizophrenia enables the investigation of the disorder's etiological and neuropathological substrates in vivo.

Altered cerebral white matter network topology and cognition in children with obstructive sleep apnea.

Objectives: The study aimed to explore the underlying mechanisms of OSA-related cognitive impairment by investigating the altered topology of brain white matter networks in children with OSA.

Methods: Graph theory was used to examine white matter networks' network topological properties in 46 OSA and 31 non-OSA children. All participants underwent MRI, polysomnography, and cognitive testing.

Association between functional network connectivity, retina structure and microvasculature, and visual performance in patients after thalamic stroke: An exploratory multi-modality study.

Background And Objective: Neuro-ophthalmologic symptoms and retinal changes have been increasingly observed following thalamic stroke, and there is mounting evidence indicating distinct alterations occurring in the vision-related functional network. However, the intrinsic correlations between these changes are not yet fully understood. Our objective was to explore the altered patterns of functional network connectivity and retina parameters, and their correlations with visual performance in patients with thalamic stroke.

Choroid plexus volume enlargement in first-episode antipsychotic-naïve schizophrenia.

Investigation of the choroid plexus in schizophrenia has seen growing interest due to its role in the interaction between neuroinflammation and brain dysfunction. Most previous studies included treated and long-term ill patients, while antipsychotics and illness course might both affect the choroid plexus. Here, we recruited first-episode antipsychotic-naïve schizophrenia patients, performed high-resolution structural brain scan and manually extracted choroid plexus volume.

Free water alterations in different inflammatory subgroups in schizophrenia.

Background: Accumulating evidence suggests that inflammatory dysregulation both in blood and the brain is implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. Alterations in peripheral cytokines are not evident in all patients and there may be discrete altered inflammatory subgroups in schizophrenia. Recent studies using a novel and in vivo free-water imaging to detect inflammatory processes, have shown increased free water in white matter in schizophrenia.

Construction and evaluation of a gated high-resolution neural network for automatic brain metastasis detection and segmentation.

Objectives: To construct and evaluate a gated high-resolution convolutional neural network for detecting and segmenting brain metastasis (BM).

Methods: This retrospective study included craniocerebral MRI scans of 1392 patients with 14,542 BMs and 200 patients with no BM between January 2012 and April 2022. A primary dataset including 1000 cases with 11,686 BMs was employed to construct the model, while an independent dataset including 100 cases with 1069 BMs from other hospitals was used to examine the generalizability.

[Anatomic Abnormalities of Hippocampal Subfields in First-Episode Drug-Naïve Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder: A Structural MRI Comparative Study].

Objective: To compare the structural changes along the longitudinal axis of hippocampus subfields between schizophrenia (SCZ) patients and major depressive disorder (MDD) patients in the early stage of their SCZ and MDD.

Methods: Seventy-nine first-episode drug-naïve patients with SCZ, 48 first-episode drug-naïve patients with MDD, and 79 healthy controls (HC) were recruited and underwent assessment of clinical symptoms and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the head. Following the calculation of hippocampal and subfield volumes with FreeSurfer, the volume of longitudinal subfields were summed up.

Altered controllability of white matter networks and related brain function changes in first-episode drug-naive schizophrenia.

Understanding how structural connectivity alterations affect aberrant dynamic function using network control theory will provide new mechanistic insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. The study included 140 drug-naive schizophrenia patients and 119 healthy controls (HCs). The average controllability (AC) quantifying capacity of brain regions/networks to shift the system into easy-to-reach states was calculated based on white matter connectivity and was compared between patients and HCs as well as functional network topological and dynamic properties.

Radiomic features of gray matter in never-treated first-episode schizophrenia.

Alterations of radiomic features (RFs) in gray matter are observed in schizophrenia, of which the results may be limited by small study samples and confounding effects of drug therapies. We tested for RFs alterations of gray matter in never-treated first-episode schizophrenia (NT-FES) patients and examined their associations with known gene expression profiles. RFs were examined in the first sample with 197 NT-FES and 178 healthy controls (HCs) and validated in the second independent sample (90 NT-FES and 74 HCs).

Linked brain connectivity patterns with psychopathological and cognitive phenotypes in drug-naïve first-episode schizophrenia.

Background: Schizophrenia is considered to be a disorder of dysconnectivity characterized by abnormal functional integration between distinct brain regions. Different brain connection abnormalities were found to be correlated with various clinical manifestations, but whether a common deficit in functional connectivity (FC) in relation to both clinical symptoms and cognitive impairments could present in first-episode patients who have never received any medication remains elusive.

Objective: To find a core deficit in the brain connectome that is related to both psychopathological and cognitive manifestations.

Detecting brain lesions in suspected acute ischemic stroke with CT-based synthetic MRI using generative adversarial networks.

Background: Difficulties in detecting brain lesions in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) have convinced researchers to use computed tomography (CT) to scan for and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to search for these lesions. This work aimed to develop a generative adversarial network (GAN) model for CT-to-MR image synthesis and evaluate reader performance with synthetic MRI (syn-MRI) in detecting brain lesions in suspected patients.

Methods: Patients with primarily suspected AIS were randomly assigned to the training (n=140) or testing (n=53) set.

Age-associated network controllability changes in first episode drug-naïve schizophrenia.

Background: Recent neuroimaging studies revealed dysregulated neurodevelopmental, or/and neurodegenerative trajectories of both structural and functional connections in schizophrenia. However, how the alterations in the brain's structural connectivity lead to dynamic function changes in schizophrenia with age remains poorly understood.

Methods: Combining structural magnetic resonance imaging and a network control theory approach, the white matter network controllability metric (average controllability) was mapped from age 16 to 60 years in 175 drug-naïve schizophrenia patients and 155 matched healthy controls.

A Multimodal Fusion Analysis of Pretreatment Anatomical and Functional Cortical Abnormalities in Responsive and Non-responsive Schizophrenia.

Antipsychotic medications provide limited long-term benefit to ~30% of schizophrenia patients. Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data have been used to investigate brain features between responders and nonresponders to antipsychotic treatment; however, these analytical techniques are unable to weigh the interrelationships between modalities. Here, we used multiset canonical correlation and joint independent component analysis (mCCA + jICA) to fuse MRI data to examine the shared and specific multimodal features between the patients and healthy controls (HCs) and between the responders and non-responders.

Grey matter connectome abnormalities and age-related effects in antipsychotic-naive schizophrenia.

Background: Convergent evidence is increasing to indicate progressive brain abnormalities in schizophrenia. Knowing the brain network features over the illness course in schizophrenia, independent of effects of antipsychotic medications, would extend our sight on this question.

Methods: We recruited 237 antipsychotic-naive patients with schizophrenia range from 16 to 73 years old, and 254 healthy controls.

Changes of Brain Structure in Patients With Metastatic Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer After Long-Term Target Therapy With EGFR-TKI.

Purpose: Epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) therapy is the routine treatment for patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring positive EGFR mutations. Patients who undergo such treatment have reported cognitive decline during follow-up. This study, therefore, aimed to evaluate brain structural changes in patients receiving EGFR-TKI to increase understanding of this potential symptom.

Pretreatment abnormalities in white matter integrity predict one-year clinical outcome in first episode schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness for which the mainstay of treatment is antipsychotics. Up to 30% of schizophrenia patients show limited response to antipsychotics. Identifying these patients before treatment could guide individualized treatment for improving outcomes in those not likely to show robust benefit from antipsychotics.

[A preliminary study on schizophrenia of distinct antipsychotic response based on diffusion tensor imaging].

The study aims to investigate whether there is difference in pre-treatment white matter parameters in treatment-resistant and treatment-responsive schizophrenia. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) was acquired from 60 first-episode drug-naïve schizophrenia (39 treatment-responsive and 21 treatment-resistant schizophrenia patients) and 69 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Imaging data was preprocessed via FSL software, then diffusion parameters including fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), axial diffusivity (AD) and radial diffusivity (RD) were extracted.

Characteristics of gray matter alterations in never-treated and treated chronic schizophrenia patients.

Though gray matter deficits have been consistently revealed in chronic treated schizophrenia, it is still not clear whether there are different brain alterations between chronic never treated and treated patients. To explore the different patterns of gray matter alterations among chronic never treated patients and those treated with monotherapy, we recruited 35 never-treated chronic schizophrenia patients with illness durations ranging from 5 to 48 years, 20 illness duration-matched risperidone monotherapy and 20 clozapine monotherapy patients, and 55 healthy controls. GM (surface area, cortical thickness, and cortical volume) measures were extracted and compared using ANCOVA across the four groups followed by post hoc tests.

Evaluating the Prognosis of Ischemic Stroke Using Low-Dose Multimodal Computed Tomography Parameters in Hyperacute Phase.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential value of low-dose multimodal computed tomography (CT) in predicting prognosis of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) within 6 hours.

Methods: The admission "one-stop-shop" multimodal CT examination, including noncontrast CT (NCCT), low-dose CT perfusion, and CT angiography (CTA), was performed in patients with symptoms of stroke within 6 hours. Noncontrast CT, CTA source image (CTA-SI), cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV), time to peak (TTP), and mean transit time (MTT) maps were studied using Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS).