Objective: The diagnosis of patients with non-lesional epilepsy (NLE) is relatively challenging because of the absence of a clear focus on imaging, and the underlying pathological mechanism remains unclear. The neuronal activity and functional connectivity of NLE patients are significantly abnormal, and the neuronal activity of epilepsy patients is closely related to cerebral blood flow (CBF). Neurovascular coupling (NVC) offers insights into the relationship between neuronal activity and CBF. Hence, we intend to explore the alterations of NVC in NLE patients and their influences on cognitive function.
Methods: Clinical data of 24 patients with NLE (15 female; age range 19-40 years; median age 30.5 years) and 39 healthy controls (27 female; age range 19-40 years; median age 30 years) were collected, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and 3D arterial spin labeling (ASL) were performed. The imaging indexes of amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and CBF were calculated, respectively, by post-processing analysis. The differences in CBF, ALFF and CBF/ALFF ratio between the two groups were analyzed, along with correlation with clinical data of NLE patients.
Results: Compared with the healthy controls, the CBF of the right parahippocampal gyrus was significantly decreased, and the CBF/ALFF ratio of the right inferior parietal, but supramarginal and angular gyri was significantly increased in NLE patients (p < 0.001). Moreover, the CBF/ALFF ratio was positively correlated with epilepsy depression score (r = 0.546, p = 0.006).
Conclusion: NLE patients showed abnormal local NVC, which was associated with the severity of depression. The combined application of rs-fMRI and ASL can comprehensively evaluate the neuronal activity and cerebral blood perfusion in patients with NLE. The abnormal NVC is of great significance for us to explore the central mechanism of the occurrence and development of NLE.
Introduction: Tai Chi Chuan (TCC) is an exercise regimen renowned for its comprehensive benefits to both physical and mental health. The present research endeavor aims to elucidate the neurocognitive impacts of TCC compared to alternative exercise modalities or therapeutic interventions.
Methods: A systematic meta-analysis was undertaken, encompassing a rigorous review of diverse datasets, wherein 422 scholarly articles were examined, with a subset of 18 articles meeting the stringent criteria for inclusion in the analytical framework.
Results: The study cohort comprised 677 participants, characterized by a mean age of 56.52 ± 14.89 years and an average educational attainment of 11.06 ± 3.32 years. Noteworthy alterations in functional neural activity were identified within the superior frontal gyrus.
Discussion: This comprehensive analysis provides significant insights into the enduring neural modifications and the distinctive contributions of TCC to cognitive health. Nevertheless, it is imperative to acknowledge the potential for bias in smaller functional magnetic resonance imaging studies owing to their inconclusive outcomes. This observation underscores the critical need for collaborative, multicenter research initiatives with expanded sample sizes to enhance the robustness and generalizability of future findings.
Mind wandering (MW) encompasses both a deliberate and a spontaneous disengagement of attention from the immediate external environment to unrelated internal thoughts. Importantly, MW has been suggested to have an inverse relationship with mindfulness, a state of nonjudgmental awareness of present-moment experience. Although they are, respectively, associated with increased and decreased activity in the default mode network (DMN), the specific contributions of deliberate and spontaneous MW, and their relationships with mindfulness abilities and resting-state macro networks remain to be elucidated. Therefore, resting-state MRI scans from 76 participants were analyzed with group independent component analysis to decompose brain networks into independent macro-networks and to see which of them predicted specific aspects of spontaneous and deliberate MW or mindfulness traits. Our results show that temporal variability of the resting-state DMN predicts spontaneous MW, which in turn is negatively associated with the acting with awareness facet of mindfulness. This finding shows that the DMN is not directly associated with overall mindfulness, but rather demonstrates that there exists a close relationship between DMN and MW, and furthermore, that the involvement of mindfulness abilities in this dynamic may be secondary. In sum, our study contributes to a better understanding of the neural bases of spontaneous MW and its relationship with mindfulness. These results open up the possibility of intervening on specific aspects of our cognitive abilities: for example, our data suggest that training the mindfulness facet acting with awareness would allow lessening our tendency for MW at inopportune times.
Purpose: Neurofeedback (NF) typically involves an operant conditioning or other reinforcement protocol aimed at self-regulating patterns of brain activation. Endogenous Neuromodulation, characterized by the absence of discrete reinforcers, has emerged over the last two decades with the extension of training into the infra-low frequency regime, i.e., below 0.1 Hz. Specifically, Infra-Low Frequency (ILF) Neurofeedback training has demonstrated efficacy in enhancing the self-organization and regulation of the central nervous system in considerable generality. The present study explores a pivotal question: Can Infra-Low Frequency (ILF) Neurofeedback, acknowledged for its influence on arousal, vigilance, and emotional states, effectively enhance both attention generally and shooting performance specifically? Additionally, we explored whether the training exerted beneficial effects on three attentional networks-Conflict, Orienting, and Alerting.
Methods: To assess shooting performance, we employed the Shooter's Coordination Analysis Target Training (SCATT), while attention networks were gauged through the Attention Network Test (ANT). Twenty semi-skilled pistol shooters, aged 28-40, underwent both the ANT and SCATT assessments before and after completing 20 half-hour ILF-Neurofeedback sessions. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups: an ILF NFB group, which underwent 20 sessions of ILF NFB training, and a control group that received no NFB.
Results: Our findings revealed that ILF-Neurofeedback significantly enhanced performance. In the ANT, the training led to a reduction in Conflict and an increase in Orienting and Alerting.
Conclusion: The study demonstrates the effectiveness of ILF-Neurofeedback in improving shooting performance, and in positively impacting all three attention networks assessed by the ANT.
Objective: We aim to investigate the impact of continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) on glymphatic system (GS), brain network (BN) and cognition in cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD).
Methods: This exploratory study included a small cohort of 11 patients, divided into a cTBS group (6 patients) and a sham-cTBS group (5 patients). Over a period of 2 weeks, all participants underwent cTBS to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The efficiency of the GS was assessed by along the perivascular space (ALPS) index. BN was measured using global efficiency (GE), characteristic path length (CPL) and clustering coefficient (Cp ). Cognition was evaluated by Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA).
Results: In the cTBS group, the ALPS index increased 4 out of 6 after treatment, compared to an increase in only 2 out of 5 in the control. Improvements in GE, CPL and Cp were observed in 4 out of 6 patients in the cTBS group, whereas no improvements were noted in the control group. The MoCA scores for all patients in the cTBS improved after treatment. Additionally, completion times of the Stroop color and word test C (Stroop C) were reduced for all individuals in the cTBS group, while the control saw an increase in one case. The Digital Span Test-backward (DST-backward) scores were significantly higher in the cTBS group than those in the control.
Conclusion: Applying cTBS to the DLPFC in CSVD may enhance the efficiency of brain glymphatic clearance, optimize network connectivity and improve cognitive function to a certain extent.
Objectives: Exposure to art, nature, or meditation, all transcending human experiences, has beneficial effects on health and wellbeing. Focusing inward or watching art and nature videos elicits positive emotions that can help heal stress-related conditions. In a pilot functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) study, we explored the effect of watching digital art or nature videos compared to contemplating the universal connectedness (also known as transcendental meditation). The instructions were to meditate on the connection to a Universal Soul linked to a sense of expansion and universal connectedness ("one with everything"), which was prompted by a video of the galactic nebula that also controlled for the visual stimuli of the two other conditions.
Methods: Nine healthy adults (mean age = 29; range = 19-42; 5 women) underwent a block design fMRI scan using a Siemens 3T Prisma scanner. The blocks included (1) nature videos, (2) AI-generated digital art ("machine hallucinations" by Refik Anadol), and (3) videos of NASA Webb-produced images of galactic nebulas. Brain oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) images were processed using FSL Version 6.0 and a general linear model (GLM) tested the contrasts between art, nature, and meditation blocks, using a cluster-corrected p-value of 0.05.
Results: Compared to rest, meditation led to BOLD increases in bilateral lateral occipital and fusiform gyri, as well as right postcentral gyrus and hippocampus. Compared to viewing AI-generated digital art, increased BOLD responses during meditation were observed in left parietal and central operculum, and right pre- and postcentral gyri, and compared to nature, in the left parietal operculum, bilateral postcentral and supramarginal gyri, and bilateral lateral occipital cortices.
Conclusion: Meditation compared to rest showed brain activation in regions associated with object, sensory, and memory processing. Meditation compared to nature videos led to activity in bilateral sensory and object processing areas, as well as a left sensory integration region (error monitoring), while meditation compared to art showed activity in left sensory integration and right sensorimotor regions. Further studies are needed to delineate the distinct neural signature and therapeutic effects of inner contemplation using human connection to art, nature, or meditative transcendent practices, in the brain and its potential in clinical applications.
Tens of minutes of training can significantly improve visual discriminability of human adults, and this fast perceptual learning (PL) effect is usually specific to the trained location, with little transfer to untrained locations. Although location specificity is generally considered as a hallmark of visual PL, it remains unclear whether it involves both facilitation of trained locations and suppression of untrained locations. Here we developed a novel experimental design to investigate the cognitive neural mechanism of location specificity of fast PL. Specifically, we manipulated attentional settings and recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in both the training and tests. To get reliable location-specific PL effects on early ERPs, we adopted a new approach involving analysis of contralateral-minus-ipsilateral P1 (P1c-i). ERP results showed that tens of minutes of training not only increased the late P1c-i (~100-120 ms) evoked by targets at the trained location, but also decreased the early P1c-i (~75-95 ms) evoked by distractors at the untrained location, both of which were location specific. Moreover, comparison between the pretest and posttest revealed that the suppression effect of early P1c-i preserved even when the untrained location became target location, whereas the facilitation effect of late P1c-i appeared only when the trained location remained actively attended. These findings provide the first evidence that fast PL induces both location-specific facilitation and location-specific suppression at early stages of visual cortical processing. We speculate that while the facilitation effect indicates more efficient allocation of voluntary attention to the trained location induced by fast PL, the suppression effect may reflect learning-associated involuntary suppression of visual processing at the untrained location. Several confounding factors with regard to the early ERP effects of PL are discussed, and some important issues worth further investigation are proposed.
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