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Previous findings have suggested that the cortex involved in walking control in freely locomotion rats. Moreover, the spectral characteristics of cortical activity showed significant differences in different walking conditions. However, whether brain connectivity presents a significant difference during rats walking under different behavior conditions has yet to be verified. Similarly, whether brain connectivity can be used in locomotion detection remains unknown. To address those concerns, we recorded locomotion and implanted electroencephalography signals in freely moving rats performing two kinds of task conditions (upslope and downslope walking). The Granger causality method was used to determine brain functional directed connectivity in rats during these processes. Machine learning algorithms were then used to categorize the two walking states, based on functional directed connectivity. We found significant differences in brain functional directed connectivity varied between upslope and downslope walking. Moreover, locomotion detection based on brain connectivity achieved the highest accuracy (91.45%), sensitivity (90.93%), specificity (91.3%), and F1-score (91.43%). Specifically, the classification results indicated that connectivity features in the high gamma band contained the most discriminative information with respect to locomotion detection in rats, with the support vector machine classifier exhibiting the most efficient performance. Our study not only suggests that brain functional directed connectivity in rats showed significant differences in various behavioral contexts but also proposed a method for classifying the locomotion states of rat walking, based on brain functional directed connectivity. These findings elucidate the characteristics of neural information interaction between various cortical areas in freely walking rats.

Circular RNAs have been reported to be widely involved in cancer cell tumorigenesis and drug resistance; here, the aim of this study was to investigate whether circRNA Integrin Subunit Alpha 7 (ITGA7) (circ_ITGA7) was associated with the tumor growth and radiosensitivity of colorectal cancer (CRC). We found that circ_ITGA7 expression was lower in CRC tissues and cells than those in the normal tissues and cell lines according to quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. As shown by cell counting kit-8 assay, flow cytometry, colony formation assay, and xenograft experiment, ectopic overexpression of circ_ITGA7 remarkably restrained CRC tumor growth and enhanced radiosensitivity in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, circ_ITGA7 could target microRNA (miR)-766 to prevent the degradation of its target gene mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 4 (SMAD4), the binding between miR-766 and circ_ITGA7 or SMAD4 was first verified by dual-luciferase activity assay. Additionally, miR-766 up-regulation reversed the inhibitory effects of circ_ITGA7 on CRC growth and radiosensitivity. Besides that, inhibition of miR-766 reduced CRC cell growth and sensitized cells to radiotherapy, and these effects mediated by miR-766 inhibitor were rescued by the silencing of SMAD4. In all, circ_ITGA7 suppressed CRC growth and enhanced radiosensitivity by up-regulating SMAD4 through sequestering miR-766, providing an insight for the further development of CRC treatment.