Aim: Sepsis is a potentially fatal condition characterized by organ failure resulting from an abnormal host response to infection, often leading to liver and kidney damage. Timely recognition and intervention of these dysfunctions have the potential to significantly reduce sepsis mortality rates. Recent studies have emphasized the critical role of serum exosomes and their miRNA content in mediating sepsis-induced organ dysfunction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMany resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) studies have explored abnormal regional spontaneous brain activity in migraine. However, these results are inconsistent. To identify the consistent regions with abnormal neural activity, we meta-analyzed these studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLocal activity metrics of resting-state functional MRI (RS-fMRI), such as the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), fractional ALFF (fALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), and degree centrality (DC), are widely used to detect brain abnormalities based on signal fluctuations. Although signal changes with echo time (TE) have been widely studied, the effect of TE on local activity metrics has not been investigated. RS-fMRI datasets from 12 healthy subjects with eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC) were obtained with a four-echo gradient-echo-planar imaging pulse sequence with the following parameters: repetition time/TE1/TE2/TE3/TE4 = 2,000/13/30.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) measures resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) signal of each voxel. However, the unit of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal is arbitrary and hence ALFF is sensitive to the scale of raw signal. A well-accepted standardization procedure is to divide each voxel's ALFF by the global mean ALFF, named mALFF.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study combined structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) and diffusion tensor MRI (DT-MRI) to investigate both gray matter density (GMD) and white matter integrity (WMI) in 18 pianists and 21 age-matched non-musicians. The pianists began their piano training at a mean age of 12. Voxel-based morphometry of the sMRI data showed that the pianists had higher GMD in the left primary sensorimotor cortex and right cerebellum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResting-state functional MRI and structural MRI were used to study correlations of spontaneous activity and gray matter density between the left and right primary sensorimotor areas in pianists and nonmusicians. Functional MRI analysis showed significant correlation of spontaneous activity between the left and right primary sensorimotor area in both groups; however, there was no between-group difference. Structural MRI analysis showed significant correlation in gray matter density between the left and right sensorimotor areas in nonmusicians (r=0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF