Aberrant Interhemispheric Functional Connectivity in Diabetic Retinopathy Patients

Abstract

Background: Accumulating lines of evidence demonstrated that diabetic retinopathy (DR) patients trigger abnormalities in brain’s functional connectivity (FC), whereas the alterations of interhemispheric coordination pattern occurring in DR are not well understood. Our study was to investigate alterations of interhemispheric coordination in DR patients.Methods: Thirty-four DR individuals (19 males and 15 females: mean age: 52.97 ± 8.35 years) and 37 healthy controls (HCs) (16 males and 21 females; mean age: 53.78 ± 7.24 years) were enrolled in the study. The voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) method was conducted to investigate the different interhemispheric FC between two groups. Then, the seed-based FC method was applied to assess the different FCs with region of interest (ROI) in the brain regions of decreased VMHC between two groups.Results: Compared with HC groups, DR groups showed decreased VMHC values in the bilateral middle temporal gyrus (MTG), lingual/calcarine/middle occipital gyrus (LING/CAL/MOG), superior temporal gyrus (STG), angular (ANG), postcentral gyrus (PosCG), inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and precentral gyrus (PreCG). Meanwhile, altered FC includes the regions of auditory network, visual network, default mode network, salience network, and sensorimotor network. Moreover, a significant positive correlation was observed between the visual acuity-oculus dexter (OD) and zVMHC values in the bilateral LING/CAL/MOG (r = 0.551, p = 0.001), STG (r = 0.426, p = 0.012), PosCG (r = 0.494, p = 0.003), and IPL (r = 0.459, p = 0.006) in DR patients.Conclusion: Our results highlighted that DR patients were associated with substantial impairment of interhemispheric coordination in auditory network, visual network, default mode network, and sensorimotor network. The VMHC might be a promising therapeutic target in the intervention of brain functional dysfunction in DR patients.

Aberrant Neurovascular Coupling in Diabetic Retinopathy Using Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) methods

“…Our prior research unveiled abnormal functional connections among the visual network (VN), default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN), and sensorimotor network in individuals with DR. 39 Another study demonstrated that interhemispheric coordination among the auditory network, visual network, default mode network, and sensorimotor network is significantly compromised in patients with diabetic retinopathy. 40 …”

Association between gene expression and altered resting-state functional networks in type 2 diabetes

“…Retinopathy is a common diabetes complication, which can lead to visual impairment. Most studies on T2DM patients with optic nerve-related complications have reported negative alterations in the MOG and the precuneus, including decreased synchronous neural activities, decreased dynamic cerebral activity ( Yang et al, 2022 ), lower degree centrality ( Huang et al, 2021 ), and decreased connectivity ( Zhang et al, 2020 ; Wan et al, 2021 ). When extended to a wider population of diabetes, the results are inconsistent.…”

Alterations of spontaneous brain activity in type 2 diabetes mellitus without mild cognitive impairment: a resting-state functional magnetic resonance study

“…However, the FC method needs a prior settlement of seed region, limiting the whole-brain analysis of brain function. Therefore, voxel-wise rs-fMRI indices, manly including amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo) and voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC), have attracted significant research interest in the neural abnormalities of T2DM patients ( Cui et al, 2014 , 2022b ; Zhou et al, 2014 ; Peng et al, 2016 ; Wang et al, 2017 , 2019 , 2020 ; Shi et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Wan et al, 2021 ; Liu M. et al, 2022 ). Each of these metrics partly contributed to elucidating the functional abnormalities related diabetes, respectively.…”