Identifying neuroimaging biomarkers for psychogenic erectile dysfunction by fusing multi‐level brain information: A resting‐state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Abstract

Background: Psychogenic erectile dysfunction (pED) patients who are under their 40s in China consist of a major component of erectile dysfunction. Existing neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that pED is a functional disorder with aberrant neural representations on the local level, the regional level, and the global level, respectively. Therefore, it is reasonable to incorporate brain information from all these levels simultaneously into consideration when identifying neuroimaging biomarkers for pED.However, no such endeavors have been made in previous studies to fully disclose the central mechanism of pED. Method:To incorporate multi-level brain features to fully explore the neural representation of pED, a novel machine learning framework was proposed in the current study. Specifically, we used amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation, regional homogeneity, and degree centrality as indices for local, regional, and global brain activity, respectively. A fully data-driven method, that is, support vector machine (SVM) with recursive feature elimination analyses, was used to investigate discriminative brain map between 48 pED patients and 39 healthy control subjects for resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data. Results:By fusing multi-level brain features, our method led to a superb classification accuracy of 95.12% between two groups. Interestingly, the right anterior cingulate gyrus and the left precuneus showed abnormal representations at different levels

Electroacupuncture for psychogenic erectile dysfunction: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study exploring the alteration of fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation

“…The orbitofrontal cortex (ORB) and IFG are thought to mediate the sexual inhibition, especially cognitive sexual inhibition, together with the DLPFC, PCC, and other brain regions ( Cheng et al, 2015 ; Chen et al, 2017 ). Studies found that the abnormal patterns brain activity in the IFG of PED patients was likely to be related to dysfunction of sensorimotor function ( Zhang X. et al, 2022 ). A previous study showed that the lesions in the ORB or frontal cortex often lead to impairments in socio-affective regulation including sexual inhibition ( Baird et al, 2007 ; Cohen and Lieberman, 2010 ).…”

Efficacy of acupuncture for psychogenic erectile dysfunction: a randomized, sham-controlled trial

“…However, our previous study included patients with different types of ED, and the mechanism of action of acupuncture for psychogenic ED remains unclear. Currently, many studies tend to explore the mechanism of pED from the perspective of brain structure and function [ 35 ]. pED patients may have a structural damage to the brain, such as reduced white and gray matter, as well as dysfunctions in multiple regions of the brain [ 36 , 37 ].…”

Potential biomarkers for distinguishing primary from acquired premature ejaculation: A diffusion tensor imaging based network study

“…Sexual pleasure in the appropriate context could lead to excitation and higher arousal, which finally culminated ejaculation and this sexual pleasure disappeared immediately after ejaculation ( Georgiadis and Kringelbach, 2012 ). The brain was found to be strongly correlated with subjective sexual pleasure and the amount of sexual pleasure sufficient to reach ejaculation might be regulated by the balance between sexual inhibitory and excitatory ( Georgiadis and Kringelbach, 2012 ; Zhao et al, 2015 ; Wang et al, 2017 ; Jin et al, 2018 ; Zhang et al, 2022 ). Normal sexual function was the consequence of the balance between central neural inhibitory and excitatory mechanisms ( Rodriguez et al, 2018 ).…”