Functional gradients reveal altered functional segregation in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease and amnestic mild cognitive impairment are associated with disrupted functional organization in brain networks, involved with alteration of functional segregation. Connectome gradients are a new tool representing brain functional topological organization to smoothly capture the human macroscale hierarchy. Here, we examined altered topological organization in amnestic mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease by connectome gradient mapping.

Heterogeneity in subjective cognitive decline in the Sino Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Decline(SILCODE): Empirically derived subtypes, structural and functional verification.

Aims: We evaluated whether Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) subtypes could be empirically derived within the Sino Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Decline (SILCODE) SCD cohort and examined associated neuroimaging markers, biomarkers, and clinical outcomes.

Methods: A cluster analysis was performed on eight neuropsychological test scores from 124 SCD SILCODE participants and 57 normal control (NC) subjects. Structural and functional neuroimaging indices were used to evaluate the SCD subgroups.

The inferior frontal gyrus spontaneous activity mediates the association of early life adversity with self-control ability in late adolescents.

Self-control, the ability to regulate prepotent desires or impulses in order to realize one's valued goal, has been found to be associated with early life adversity. However, the neural correlates underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. The present study employed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate this issue among late adolescents (N = 538).

Divergent Connectivity Changes in Gray Matter Structural Covariance Networks in Subjective Cognitive Decline, Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) has a long preclinical stage that can last for decades prior to progressing toward amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and/or dementia. Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) is characterized by self-experienced memory decline without any evidence of objective cognitive decline and is regarded as the later stage of preclinical AD. It has been reported that the changes in structural covariance patterns are affected by AD pathology in the patients with AD and aMCI within the specific large-scale brain networks.

Decomposition of individual-specific and individual-shared components from resting-state functional connectivity using a multi-task machine learning method.

Resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) can be used for mapping large-scale human brain networks during rest. There is considerable interest in distinguishing the individual-shared and individual-specific components in RSFC for the better identification of individuals and prediction of behavior. Therefore, we propose a multi-task learning based sparse convex alternating structure optimization (MTL-sCASO) method to decompose RSFC into individual-specific connectivity and individual-shared connectivity.

Altered Neuroanatomical Asymmetries of Subcortical Structures in Subjective Cognitive Decline, Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer's Disease.

Background: Individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD), defined by self-reported memory complaints but normal performance in objective neuropsychological tests, may be at higher risk of worsening or more frequent memory loss until conversion to Alzheimer's disease (AD) or related dementia. Asymmetry in two hemispheres is a cardinal character of human brain's structure and function, and altered brain asymmetry has also been connected with AD.

Objective: This study aimed to determine whether the asymmetry of subcortical structures in individuals with SCD and amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and AD patients are altered compared with normal controls (NC).

Structural Covariance Changes of Anterior and Posterior Hippocampus During Musical Training in Young Adults.

Musical training can induce the functional and structural changes of the hippocampus. The hippocampus is not a homogeneous structure which can be divided into anterior and posterior parts along its longitudinal axis, and the whole-brain structural covariances of anterior (aHC) and posterior hippocampus (pHC) show distinct patterns in young adults. However, little is known about whether the anterior and posterior hippocampal structural covariances change after long-term musical training.

[A review on brain age prediction in brain ageing].

The human brain deteriorates as we age, and the rate and the trajectories of these changes significantly vary among brain regions and among individuals. Because neuroimaging data are potentially important indicators of individual's brain health, they are commonly used in brain age prediction. In this review, we summarize brain age prediction model from neuroimaging-based studies in the last ten years.

Voluntary wheel running delays brain atrophy in aged mice.

Background: Physical exercises have been shown to be a surprisingly effective strategy to take advantage of the brain's natural capacity for plasticity, and prevent brain degeneration in mouse histological studies. In vivo magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) provides highly resolved anatomical images and allows quantitative assessment of brain atrophy in the aged mouse model.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate, through the effects of 10 weeks voluntary wheel running, the mouse's brain atrophy.

Small-world indices via network efficiency for brain networks from diffusion MRI.

The small-world architecture has gained considerable attention in anatomical brain connectivity studies. However, how to adequately quantify small-worldness in diffusion networks has remained a problem. We addressed the limits of small-world measures and defined new metric indices: the small-world efficiency (SWE) and the small-world angle (SWA), both based on the tradeoff between high global and local efficiency.

Evaluation of five diffeomorphic image registration algorithms for mouse brain magnetic resonance microscopy.

The development of genetically engineered mouse models for neuronal diseases and behavioural disorders have generated a growing need for small animal imaging. High-resolution magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) provides powerful capabilities for noninvasive studies of mouse brains, while avoiding some limits associated with the histological procedures. Quantitative comparison of structural images is a critical step in brain imaging analysis, which highly relies on the performance of image registration techniques.

The relationships between the identified critical nodes within DTI-based brain structural network using hub measurements and vulnerability measurement.

Network analysis of human brain connectivity based on graph theory has consistently identified sets of regions that are critically important for enabling efficient information integration and communication, especially for the understanding of cognitive functions, the discoveries of aging effects and the network change due to brain diseases. Two major approaches, hub measurement (HM) and vulnerability measurement (VM), have been proposed to detect these `important nodes' within brain network organization. However, the relationship between the spatial localization and the number of these identified nodes found using HM and VM approaches respectively is still unknown.

Predicting healthy older adult's brain age based on structural connectivity networks using artificial neural networks.

Brain ageing is followed by changes of the connectivity of white matter (WM) and changes of the grey matter (GM) concentration. Neurodegenerative disease is more vulnerable to an accelerated brain ageing, which is associated with prospective cognitive decline and disease severity. Accurate detection of accelerated ageing based on brain network analysis has a great potential for early interventions designed to hinder atypical brain changes.

Mouse brain magnetic resonance microscopy: Applications in Alzheimer disease.

Over the past two decades, various Alzheimer's disease (AD) trangenetic mice models harboring genes with mutation known to cause familial AD have been created. Today, high-resolution magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) technology is being widely used in the study of AD mouse models. It has greatly facilitated and advanced our knowledge of AD.

[Relationship between variation of coxsackievirus B3 VP1 sequence from cerebrospinal fluid of children and severity of damage to central nervous system].

Objective: To investigate the possible relationship between variation of coxsackievirus B3 (CoxB3) VP1 sequence from cerebrospinal fluid of children with severe and mild central nervous system (CNS) infection and damage to CNS in children from Shandong province.

Methods: The enteroviruses were detected using VP1 typing and sequencing primer for enteroviruses from 73 enterovirus-infected cases confirmed by detection of cerebrospinal fluid by enteroviruses common primer. VP1 sequences (450 nucleotides) were determined and analyzed for 21 CoxB3 enteroviruses strains isolated in Qingdao and Binzhou, and were compared with that of BLAST search procedures from GeneBank in NCBI.