Detecting Functional Connectivity of the Cerebellum Using Low Frequency Fluctuations (LFFs)

So far, resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) has been performed mainly by seed correlation analysis (SCA) on functional MRI (fMRI) studies. In previous studies, the seeds are usually selected on the basis of prior anatomical information or previously performed activation maps. In this paper, we proposed a novel way to select the desired seeds by taking the natures of resting state data into account. The proposed approach is based on the measurement of regional homogeneity (ReHo) of brain regions. Using this technique, 2 locations showing higher ReHo in the cerebellum (i.e. the bilateral anterior inferior cerebellum, AICb) were identified and used as the seeds for RSFC patterns studies. We found that the bilateral AICb show significant functional connectivity with the bilateral thalamus, the bilateral hippocampus, the precuneus, the temporal lobe and the prefrontal lobe. Further, the differences of RSFC patterns between the bilateral AICb were ascertained by a random effect paired t-test. These findings may improve our understanding of cerebellar involvement in motor and a variety of non-motor functions.

[1]  Noriaki Yahata,et al.  Selective enhancement of functional connectivity in the left prefrontal cortex during sentence processing , 2003, NeuroImage.

[2]  F Barkhof,et al.  Identifying confounds to increase specificity during a “no task condition” Evidence for hippocampal connectivity using fMRI , 2003, NeuroImage.

[3]  J. Schmahmann.  From movement to thought: Anatomic substrates of the cerebellar contribution to cognitive processing , 1996, Human brain mapping.

[4]  J. Lurito,et al.  Multiple sclerosis: low-frequency temporal blood oxygen level-dependent fluctuations indicate reduced functional connectivity initial results. , 2002, Radiology.

[5]  M. George.  Seminars in Basic Neurosciences , 1995 .

[6]  Yingli Lu,et al.  Regional homogeneity approach to fMRI data analysis , 2004, NeuroImage.

[7]  N C Andreasen,et al.  Schizophrenia and cognitive dysmetria: a positron-emission tomography study of dysfunctional prefrontal-thalamic-cerebellar circuitry. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[9]  R W Cox,et al.  AFNI: software for analysis and visualization of functional magnetic resonance neuroimages. , 1996, Computers and biomedical research, an international journal.

[10]  M. Torrens.  Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268 , 1990 .

[11]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical recipes , 1990 .

[12]  B. Horwitz,et al.  Brain activity during transient sadness and happiness in healthy women. , 1995, The American journal of psychiatry.

[13]  Peter Stoeter,et al.  Altered effective connectivity during working memory performance in schizophrenia: a study with fMRI and structural equation modeling , 2003, NeuroImage.

[14]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical Recipes in C, 2nd Edition , 1992 .

[15]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Generalisability, Random Effects & Population Inference , 1998, NeuroImage.

[16]  M. Lowe,et al.  Functional Connectivity in Single and Multislice Echoplanar Imaging Using Resting-State Fluctuations , 1998, NeuroImage.

[17]  Vinod Menon,et al.  Functional connectivity in the resting brain: A network analysis of the default mode hypothesis , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[18]  P. Skudlarski,et al.  Detection of functional connectivity using temporal correlations in MR images , 2002, Human brain mapping.

[19]  P. Strick,et al.  Anatomical evidence for cerebellar and basal ganglia involvement in higher cognitive function. , 1994, Science.

[20]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Functional Connectivity: The Principal-Component Analysis of Large (PET) Data Sets , 1993, Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism.

[21]  Tianzi Jiang,et al.  Modulation of functional connectivity during the resting state and the motor task , 2004, Human brain mapping.

[22]  P. Roland,et al.  Activation of Multi‐modal Cortical Areas Underlies Short‐term Memory , 1996, The European journal of neuroscience.

[23]  V. Lovelace-Chandler.  The Cerebellum and the Adaptive Coordination of Movement. Thach WT, Goodkin HP, Keating JG. Ann Rev Neurosci 15:403-442, 1992. , 1993 .

[24]  V. Haughton,et al.  Functional connectivity in the thalamus and hippocampus studied with functional MR imaging. , 2000, AJNR. American journal of neuroradiology.

[25]  B. Biswal,et al.  Cocaine administration decreases functional connectivity in human primary visual and motor cortex as detected by functional MRI , 2000, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[26]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical recipes in C , 2002 .

[27]  Keith R. Godfrey,et al.  Correlation methods , 1980, Autom..

[28]  N. Andreasen,et al.  Effects of olanzapine on cerebellar functional connectivity in schizophrenia measured by fMRI during a simple motor task , 2001, Psychological Medicine.

[29]  J. Bower,et al.  Cerebellum Implicated in Sensory Acquisition and Discrimination Rather Than Motor Control , 1996, Science.

[30]  B. Biswal,et al.  Functional connectivity in the motor cortex of resting human brain using echo‐planar mri , 1995, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[31]  W T Thach,et al.  The cerebellum and the adaptive coordination of movement. , 1992, Annual review of neuroscience.

[32]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical recipes in C (2nd ed.): the art of scientific computing , 1992 .