Mary Beth Nebel^1,2, Suresh E Joel^1,2, John Muschelli^1,3, Anita D Barber^1,2, Brian S Caffo³, James J Pekar^1,2, and Stewart H Mostofsky^1,2
1Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, ²Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, ³Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Children with autism (ASD) experience difficulty performing motor skills, which may reflect abnormal connectivity within networks underlying motor control and learning. Motivated by the utility of clustering algorithms in visualizing functional organization within the brain, we present a parcellation of a key area of the motor network, the primary motor cortex (M1), in both typically developing (TD) children and children with ASD and introduce methods for selecting the number of clusters, matching clusters across groups and testing group differences. Observed group differences in M1 organization suggest that developmental segregation of upper and lower limb control may be delayed in ASD.

Alireza Akhondi-Asl¹, Arne Hans¹, Benoit Scherrer¹, Jurriaan M. Peters¹, and Simon K. Warfield^1
1Computational Radiology Laboratory, Children's Hospital, Harvard medical school, Boston, MA, United States

 

Barbara Basile^1,2, Ugo Nocentini³, Carlo Caltagirone³, and Marco Bozzali^1
1Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, ²School of Cognitive Psychotherapy, Rome, Italy, ³Clinical and Behavioral Neurology, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

Psychopathological symptoms like anger, depression and disphoria are frequently observed in patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), but yet their neuronal substrate has been little investigated. The aim of this fMRI study was to assess the basis of abnormal emotional processing in MS, with a particular focus on anger and joy. We show that patients with MS activate more than healthy subjects when exposed to emotional stimuli (facial expressions), thus confirming the occurrence of an abnormal emotion processing. We suggest that these abnormalities might represent the neurobiological substrate for psychopathological symptoms.

Barbara Basile^1,2, Maura Castelli³, Fabrizia Monteleone³, Diego Centonze³, Carlo Caltagirone⁴, and Marco Bozzali^5
1Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, Italy, ²School of Cognitive Psychotherapy, Rome, Italy, ³Neuroscience, University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Rome, Italy, ⁴Clinical and Behavioral Neurology, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy, ⁵Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

Resting-state fMRI was used here to investigate changes in functional connectivity (FC) within two critical networks, namely the sensory-motor and the default-mode-network, in patients with relapsing-remitting (RR-) and secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS). Overall, MS patients compared to healthy controls, revealed a compensatory increase of FC in both networks. Interestingly, the differences in FC observed in the two networks, between RR- and SPMS patients, indicate a relationship between their capability of recruiting additional brain areas (possible compensation mechanism to contrast the accumulation of brain tissue damage) and the severity in motor and cognitive disabilities.

Peiying Liu¹, Andrew C. Hebrank², Karen M. Rodrigue², Kristen M. Kennedy², Denise C. Park², and Hanzhang Lu^1
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, United States, ²Center for Vital Longevity, University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, Texas, United States

Cognitive aging studies using BOLD fMRI have revealed a wealth of information about the aging brain. However, few previous studies have considered the decline of brain vascular health with age as confounding factor. We conducted the first cognitive aging study in lifespan that interpreted fMRI findings in the context of vascular changes. Our observations provide strong evidence of a need to re-examine previous fMRI aging literature and suggest that previous studies may have over-estimated age-related decline while under-estimating the extent of compensatory over-recruitment. The reactivity-corrected fMRI data suggested no evidence of age-related decline in neural activity under similar task performance.

Ming Zhang¹, Pan Lin², Chenwang Jin¹, Cuiping Mao¹, Chen Niu¹, ZhiGang Min¹, Jingxia Dang³, Qiaoting Jin³, and Xin Liu^2
1Department of Medical Imaging, the First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College,Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, shaanxi, China, ²Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Education Ministry, Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, ³Department of Neurology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College,Xian Jiaotong University, Xi'an, shaanxi, China

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by deficits in motor systems.Striatum-motor network has found to play important role in motor control.Whether the fluctuations of resting fMRI signal within striatum-motor network funtional connectivity is associated with abnormal neuronal activity remains unclear.In this study, we specifically investigate wheather patients with ALS is associated with dysfunction of interregion functional connectivity in striatum-motor network that support motor function.

Katherine A Koenig¹, Stephen M Rao², Mark J Lowe¹, Jian Lin¹, Deborah L Harrington³, Dawei Liu⁴, Ken Sakaie¹, and Jane S Paulsen^5
1Imaging Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, United States, ²Schey Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Neurological Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, United States, ³Research, Neurology, and Radiology Services, Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, United States, ⁴Department of Biostatistics, The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, United States, ⁵Department of Psychiatry, The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, United States

Functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI), measured from low-frequency fluctuations in the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) timeseries during rest, has the potential to identify disruptions in intrinsic brain connectivity in the prodromal stages of Huntington’s disease (HD). The current study evaluated differences in 8 gene-negative subjects, 8 gene-positive subjects who were close to diagnosis of manifest HD, and 8 gene-positive subjects who were far from diagnosis of manifest HD. Significant group differences in the strength of connectivity from the left insula and the right supplementary motor cortex represent the first report of resting-state fcMRI differences in prodromal HD individuals.

Štefan Holiga¹, Harald E Möller¹, Tomáš Sieger^2,3, Matthias L Schroeter^1,4, Robert Jech², and Karsten Mueller^1
1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, ²Department of Neurology and Center of Clinical Neuroscience, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, ³Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic,⁴Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, Leipzig, Germany

 

Mohit Saxena¹, Senthil S Kumaran², Vinay Goyal¹, Vaishna Narang³, and Madhuri Behari^1
1Department of Neurology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi, India, ²Department of N.M.R., All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi, India, ³The School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Delhi, India

Parkinsonism is associated with speech dysfunction. The study evaluates the abnormalities in articulatory planning, execution and their correlation in Parkinson’s disease (PD), Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) with the BOLD activation pattern, to understand the speech deficits in these disorders.

Qin Chen¹, Pinglei Pan¹, Wei Song¹, Hehan Tang², Dong Zhou¹, Qiyong Gong², and Huifang Shang^1
1Department of Neurology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China, ²Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China

Recent studies have applied functional MRI to investigate the altered brain function on PD patients[2,3], but it still remains unclear about how the neural network changes in different stages of PD. The present study aims to examine alterations pattern of regional and neural network function in PD patients in different stages by using resting state fMRI. The result indicated that a complementary hyperactivity neural network in the early stage shifted to a normal level or even decreased function in the late stage in patients with PD.