Cocaine use disorder (CUD) is a major public health concern with devastating social, economic, and mental health implications. A better understanding of the underlying neurobiology and phenotypic variations in individuals with CUD is necessary for the development of effective and targeted treatments. In this study, 39 women and 54 men with CUD completed a 6-min resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan after intranasal oxytocin (OXY) or placebo administration. Graph-theory network analysis was used to quantify functional connectivity changes caused by OXY in striatum, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), insula, and amygdala nodes of interest. OXY increased connectivity in the right ACC and left amygdala in males, whereas OXY increased connectivity in the right ACC and right accumbens in females. Machine learning was then used to associate treatment response (placebo minus OXY) in nodes of interest with years of cocaine use and severity of childhood trauma separately for males and females. Childhood trauma and years of cocaine use were associated with OXY-induced changes in ACC connectivity for both men and women, but connectivity changes in the amygdala were associated with years of cocaine use in men and connectivity changes in the right insula were associated with years of cocaine use in women. These findings suggest that salience network nodes (ACC and insula) are potential OXY treatment targets in CUD, with the amygdala as a treatment target for men and the accumbens as a treatment target for women.
Face processing capacities become more specialized and advanced during development, but neural underpinnings of these processes are not fully understood. The present study applied graph theory-based network analysis to tasknegative (resting blocks) and task-positive (viewing faces) functional magnetic resonance imaging data in children (5-17 years) and adults (18-42 years) to test the hypothesis that the development of a specialized network for face processing is driven by task-positive processing (face viewing) more than by task-negative processing (visual fixation) and by both progressive and regressive changes in network properties. Predictive modeling was used to predict age from node-based network properties derived from task-positive and task-negative states in a whole-brain network (WBN) and a canonical face network (FN). The best-fitting model indicated that FN maturation was marked by both progressive and regressive changes in information diffusion (eigenvector centrality) in the task-positive state, with regressive changes outweighing progressive changes. Hence, FN maturation was characterized by reductions in information diffusion potentially reflecting the development of more specialized modules. In contrast, WBN maturation was marked by a balance of progressive and regressive changes in hub-connectivity (betweenness centrality) in the task-negative state. These findings suggest that the development of specialized networks like the FN depends on dynamic developmental changes associated with domain-specific information (e.g., face processing), but maturation of the brain as a whole can be predicted from task-free states.
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Our research hypothesis is that resting state fMRI (rsfMRI) data can be used to identify regions of the brain which are associated with cognitive decline in patients – thereby providing a tool by which to characterize AD progression in patients. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We used data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) to analyze Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) questionnaire scores from 14 patients diagnosed with AD at two measurement occasions. RsfMRI data was available at the first of these occasions for these patients. These rsfMRI data were summarized into 264 node-based graph theory measures of clustering coefficient and eigenvector centrality. To address our research hypothesis, we modeled changes in patient MMSE scores over time as a function of these rsfMRI data, controlling for relevant confounding factors. This model accounted for the high-dimensionality of our predictor data, the longitudinal nature of the outcome, and our desire to identify a subset of regions in the brain most associated with the MMSE outcome. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The use of either the clustering coefficient or eigenvector centrality rsfMRI predictors in modeling MMSE scores for patients over time resulted in the identification of different subsets of brain regions associated with cognitive decline. This suggests that these predictors capture different information on patient propensity for cognitive decline. Further work is warranted to validate these results on a larger sample of ADNI patients. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: We conclude that different rsfMRI graph theory measures capture different aspects of cognitive function and decline in patients, which could be a future consideration in clinical practice.
Background Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and other dementias. Despite the emerging association between AUD and AD, there is a paucity of data available from mid‐life age ranges (e.g., 45 to 65 years) to assess AUD‐related risk for AD that might be present early in the disease trajectory. Method Functional connectome measures (graph‐theory) were calculated from resting state fMRI scans in 118 healthy controls (HC), 25 subjects with AUD (45‐61 years of age), and 51 subjects with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) or AD. Following dimension reduction of 282 network nodes into 10 components using principal components analysis, predictive modeling with best subsets was used to isolate network components that predicted age in HC. Network components that significantly predicted age in HC were further examined to determine whether the AUD group exhibited premature brain aging or showed similar pathologic profiles as AD/aMCI. Result Predictive modeling with eigenvector centrality as a predictor of age yielded significant models (p’s < .0001). A network component including occipital and frontal pole nodes was a significant predictor in all models. In the frontal pole, AUD age trajectories showed a baseline shift relative to age‐matched HC subjects (49‐61 years of age), indicating premature brain aging. However, these age trends were not significantly different when Fisher z‐transformations of age trends were compared with a t‐test (p = .5). Nevertheless, the ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of group (AUD, HC, aMCI; p < .0001): average eigenvector centrality of the frontal pole in AUD was significantly lower than in HC (p = 0.0001) and indistinguishable from that of AD/aMCI subjects (p = 1.0), according to Bonferroni post‐hoc tests. Conclusion Premature brain aging in AUD may reflect vulnerability to AD‐like neurodegenerative processes that are manifest at the level of large‐scale network connectivity. Some data used in preparation of this abstract were obtained from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database (adni.loni.usc.edu). As such, the investigators within the ADNI contributed to the design and implementation of ADNI and/or provided data but did not participate in analysis or writing of this report.
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