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Temporal-lobe epilepsy (TLE) involves seizures that typically originate in the hippocampus. There is evidence that seizures involve anatomically and functionally connected brain networks within and beyond the temporal lobe. Many studies have explored the effect of TLE on gray matter and resting-state functional connectivity in the brain. However, the relationship between structural and functional changes has not been fully explored. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between gray matter concentration (GMC) and functional connectivity in TLE at the voxel level. A voxel-wise linear regression analysis was performed between GMC maps and whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity maps to both the left thalamus (Lthal) and the left hippocampus (LH) in a group of 15 patients with left TLE. Twenty regions were found that exhibited GMC decreases linearly correlated with resting-state functional connectivity to either the LH or the Lthal in the patient group only. A subset of these regions had significantly reduced GMC, and one of these regions also had reduced functional connectivity to the LH in TLE compared to the controls. These results suggest a network of impairment in left TLE where more severe reductions in GMC accompany decreases (LH, Lthal, right midcingulate gyrus, left precuneus, and left postcentral gyrus) or increases (LH to right thalamus) in resting functional connectivity. However, direct relationships between these imaging parameters and disease characteristics in these regions have yet to be established.

Mapping the quantitative relationship between structure and function in the human brain is an important and challenging problem. Numerous volumetric, surface, regions of interest and voxelwise image processing techniques have been developed to statistically assess potential correlations between imaging and non-imaging metrices. Recently, biological parametric mapping has extended the widely popular statistical parametric mapping approach to enable application of the general linear model to multiple image modalities (both for regressors and regressands) along with scalar valued observations. This approach offers great promise for direct, voxelwise assessment of structural and functional relationships with multiple imaging modalities. However, as presented, the biological parametric mapping approach is not robust to outliers and may lead to invalid inferences (e.g., artifactual low p-values) due to slight mis-registration or variation in anatomy between subjects. To enable widespread application of this approach, we introduce robust regression and non-parametric regression in the neuroimaging context of application of the general linear model. Through simulation and empirical studies, we demonstrate that our robust approach reduces sensitivity to outliers without substantial degradation in power. The robust approach and associated software package provide a reliable way to quantitatively assess voxelwise correlations between structural and functional neuroimaging modalities.

To investigate the effects of microwave heating on decomposing epoxy resin, ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulations are performed. As one of its special effects, the thermal runaway phenomenon is studied and compared under microwave heating and under conventional heating. This study shows that this phenomenon results from the enhancement of system absorption of microwave energy, which is caused by the increasing number of small size polar species generated during the pyrolysis of epoxy resin under microwave heating. Meanwhile, non-thermal effects are investigated under microwave heating.Simulations indicate that, at the early stage of decomposition, average generating rates of H 2 O and H 2 obtained under microwave heating are always, or partly, lower than that obtained under conventional heating. To analyze the influence of microwave heating on reaction rates, collision theory is introduced.Further, several simplified collision models are constructed and formulated to study the effectiveness of collision orientations under microwave heating. Analyses illustrate that external microwave heating reduces the effectiveness of collision orientations between polar hydric fragments as well as hydroxyl radicals and polar hydric fragments, thus, decreasing relevant reaction rates.