TY - JOUR
T1 - Brain network dynamics in people with visual snow syndrome
AU - Strik, Myrte
AU - Clough, Meaghan
AU - Solly, Emma J.
AU - Glarin, Rebecca
AU - White, Owen B.
AU - Kolbe, Scott C.
AU - Fielding, Joanne
N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the facilities, scientific and technical assistance from the National Imaging Facility, a National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy capability, at the Melbourne Brain Centre Imaging Unit, The University of Melbourne. This work was supported by a research collaboration agreement with Siemens Healthineers. The authors would like to thank Professor Carsten Murawski and Mr Juan Pablo Franco from the Brain, Mind and Markets Laboratory at the University of Melbourne for contributing healthy control data for this study. This work was supported by the MASSIVE HPC facility ( www.massive.org.au ). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Visual snow syndrome (VSS) is a neurological disorder characterized by a range of continuous visual disturbances. Little is known about the functional pathological mechanisms underlying VSS and their effect on brain network topology, studied using high-resolution resting-state (RS) 7 T MRI. Forty VSS patients and 60 healthy controls underwent RS MRI. Functional connectivity matrices were calculated, and global efficiency (network integration), modularity (network segregation), local efficiency (LE, connectedness neighbors) and eigenvector centrality (significance node in network) were derived using a dynamic approach (temporal fluctuations during acquisition). Network measures were compared between groups, with regions of significant difference correlated with known aberrant ocular motor VSS metrics (shortened latencies and higher number of inhibitory errors) in VSS patients. Lastly, nodal co-modularity, a binary measure of node pairs belonging to the same module, was studied. VSS patients had lower modularity, supramarginal centrality and LE dynamics of multiple (sub)cortical regions, centered around occipital and parietal lobules. In VSS patients, lateral occipital cortex LE dynamics correlated positively with shortened prosaccade latencies (p =.041, r =.353). In VSS patients, occipital, parietal, and motor nodes belonged more often to the same module and demonstrated lower nodal co-modularity with temporal and frontal regions. This study revealed reduced dynamic variation in modularity and local efficiency strength in the VSS brain, suggesting that brain network dynamics are less variable in terms of segregation and local clustering. Further investigation of these changes could inform our understanding of the pathogenesis of the disorder and potentially lead to treatment strategies.
AB - Visual snow syndrome (VSS) is a neurological disorder characterized by a range of continuous visual disturbances. Little is known about the functional pathological mechanisms underlying VSS and their effect on brain network topology, studied using high-resolution resting-state (RS) 7 T MRI. Forty VSS patients and 60 healthy controls underwent RS MRI. Functional connectivity matrices were calculated, and global efficiency (network integration), modularity (network segregation), local efficiency (LE, connectedness neighbors) and eigenvector centrality (significance node in network) were derived using a dynamic approach (temporal fluctuations during acquisition). Network measures were compared between groups, with regions of significant difference correlated with known aberrant ocular motor VSS metrics (shortened latencies and higher number of inhibitory errors) in VSS patients. Lastly, nodal co-modularity, a binary measure of node pairs belonging to the same module, was studied. VSS patients had lower modularity, supramarginal centrality and LE dynamics of multiple (sub)cortical regions, centered around occipital and parietal lobules. In VSS patients, lateral occipital cortex LE dynamics correlated positively with shortened prosaccade latencies (p =.041, r =.353). In VSS patients, occipital, parietal, and motor nodes belonged more often to the same module and demonstrated lower nodal co-modularity with temporal and frontal regions. This study revealed reduced dynamic variation in modularity and local efficiency strength in the VSS brain, suggesting that brain network dynamics are less variable in terms of segregation and local clustering. Further investigation of these changes could inform our understanding of the pathogenesis of the disorder and potentially lead to treatment strategies.
KW - 7 T MRI
KW - network topology
KW - ocular motor behavior
KW - resting-state functional MRI
KW - ultra-high field MRI
KW - visual snow
KW - visual snow syndrome
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85144009079&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26176
DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26176
M3 - Article
C2 - 36478470
SN - 1065-9471
JO - Human brain mapping
JF - Human brain mapping
ER -