Uncovering the alterations of neural interactions within the brain during epilepsy is important for the clinical diagnosis and treatment. Previous studies have shown that the phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) can be used as a potential biomarker for locating epileptic zones and characterizing the transition of epileptic phases. However, in contrast to the θ-γ coupling widely investigated in epilepsy, few studies have paid attention to the β-γ coupling, as well as its potential applications. In the current study, we use the modulation index (MI) to calculate the scalp electroencephalography (EEG)-based β-γ coupling and investigate the corresponding changes during different epileptic phases. The results show that the β-γ coupling of each brain region changes with the evolution of epilepsy, and in several brain regions, the β-γ coupling decreases during the ictal period but increases in the post-ictal period, where the differences are statistically significant. Moreover, the alterations of β-γ coupling between different brain regions can also be observed, and the strength of β-γ coupling increases in the post-ictal period, where the differences are also significant. Taken together, these findings not only contribute to understanding neural interactions within the brain during the evolution of epilepsy, but also provide a new insight into the clinical treatment.
With the widespread use of electrical equipment, cognitive functions such as working memory (WM) could be severely affected when people are exposed to 50 Hz electromagnetic fields (EMF) for long term. However, the effects of EMF exposure on WM and its neural mechanism remain unclear. In the present paper, 15 rats were randomly assigned to three groups, and exposed to an EMF environment at 50 Hz and 2 mT for a different duration: 0 days (control group), 24 days (experimental group I), and 48 days (experimental group II). Then, their WM function was assessed by the T-maze task. Besides, their local field potential (LFP) in the media prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was recorded by the in vivo multichannel electrophysiological recording system to study the power spectral density (PSD) of θ and γ oscillations and the phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) intensity of θ-γ oscillations during the T-maze task. The results showed that the PSD of θ and γ oscillations decreased in experimental groups I and II, and the PAC intensity between θ and high-frequency γ (hγ) decreased significantly compared to the control group. The number of days needed to meet the task criterion was more in experimental groups I and II than that of control group. The results indicate that long-term exposure to EMF could impair WM function. The possible reason may be the impaired communication between different rhythmic oscillations caused by a decrease in θ-hγ PAC intensity. This paper demonstrates the negative effects of EMF on WM and reveals the potential neural mechanisms from the changes of PAC intensity, which provides important support for further investigation of the biological effects of EMF and its mechanisms.
Amblyopia is a visual development deficit caused by abnormal visual experience in early life, mainly manifesting as defected visual acuity and binocular visual impairment, which is considered to reflect abnormal development of the brain rather than organic lesions of the eye. Previous studies have reported abnormal spontaneous brain activity in patients with amblyopia. However, the location of abnormal spontaneous activity in patients with amblyopia and the association between abnormal brain function activity and clinical deficits remain unclear. The purpose of this study is to analyze spontaneous brain functional activity abnormalities in patients with amblyopia and their associations with clinical defects using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. In this study, 31 patients with amblyopia and 31 healthy controls were enrolled for resting-state fMRI scanning. The results showed that spontaneous activity in the right angular gyrus, left posterior cerebellum, and left cingulate gyrus were significantly lower in patients with amblyopia than in controls, and spontaneous activity in the right middle temporal gyrus was significantly higher in patients with amblyopia. In addition, the spontaneous activity of the left cerebellum in patients with amblyopia was negatively associated with the best-corrected visual acuity of the amblyopic eye, and the spontaneous activity of the right middle temporal gyrus was positively associated with the stereoacuity. This study found that adult patients with amblyopia showed abnormal spontaneous activity in the angular gyrus, cerebellum, middle temporal gyrus, and cingulate gyrus. Furthermore, the functional abnormalities in the cerebellum and middle temporal gyrus may be associated with visual acuity defects and stereopsis deficiency in patients with amblyopia. These findings help explain the neural mechanism of amblyopia, thus promoting the improvement of the treatment strategy for amblyopia.
The objective of this study is to combine troponin and indicators of cardiac acoustics for synthetically evaluating cardiac fatigue of rabbits, analyzing exercise-induced cardiac fatigue (EICF) and exercise-induced cardiac damage (EICD). New Zealand white rabbits were used to conduct a multi-step swimming experiments with load, reaching an exhaustive state for evaluating if the amplitude ratio of the first to second heart sound (S1/S2) and heart rate (HR) during the exhaustive exercise would decrease or not and if they would be recovered 24-48 h after exhaustive exercise. The experimental end point was to complete 3 times of exhaustions or death from exhaustion. Circulating troponin I (cTnI) were detected from all of the experimental rabbits at rest [(0.02±0.01) ng/mL], which, in general, indicated that there existed a physiological release of troponin. After the first exhaustive swim, cTnI of the rabbits increased. However, with 24-hour rest, S1/S2, HR, and cTnI of the tested rabbits all returned toward baseline levels, which meant that the experimental rabbits experienced a cardiac fatigue process. After repeated exhaustion, overloading phenomena were observed, which led to death in 3 out of 11 rabbits, indicating their cardiac damage; the troponin elevation under this condition could be interpreted by pathological release. Evaluation of myocardial damage can not be based on the troponin levels alone, but can only be based on a comprehensive analysis.
We investigated the baseline brain activity level in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) by amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) based on resting-state functional MRI (fMRI). We examined 13 patients in the MDD group and 14 healthy volunteers in the control group by resting-state fMRI on GE Signa 3.0T. We calculated and compared the ALFF values of the two groups. In the MDD group, ALFF values in the right medial prefrontal were higher than those in control group, with statistically significant differences (P<0.001). ALFF values in the left parietal in the MDD group were lower than those in control group with statistically significant differences (P<0.001). This resting-state fMRI study suggested that the alteration brain activity in the right medial prefrontal and left parietal ALFF contributed to the understanding of the pathophysiological mechanism of MDD patients.
The forced oscillation technique (FOT) is an active pulmonary function measurement technique that was applied to identify the mechanical properties of the respiratory system using external excitation signals. FOT commonly includes single frequency sine, pseudorandom and periodic impulse excitation signals. Aiming at preventing the time-domain amplitude overshoot that might exist in the acquisition of combined multi sinusoidal pseudorandom signals, this paper studied the phase optimization of pseudorandom signals. We tried two methods including the random phase combination and time-frequency domain swapping algorithm to solve this problem, and used the crest factor to estimate the effect of optimization. Furthermore, in order to make the pseudorandom signals met the requirement of the respiratory system identification in 4–40 Hz, we compensated the input signals’ amplitudes at the low frequency band (4–18 Hz) according to the frequency-response curve of the oscillation unit. Resuts showed that time-frequency domain swapping algorithm could effectively optimize the phase combination of pseudorandom signals. Moreover, when the amplitudes at low frequencies were compensated, the expected stimulus signals which met the performance requirements were obtained eventually.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by cognitive impairment, with the predominant clinical diagnosis of spatial working memory (SWM) deficiency, which seriously affects the physical and mental health of patients. However, the current pharmacological therapies have unsatisfactory cure rates and other problems, so non-pharmacological physical therapies have gradually received widespread attention. Recently, a novel treatment using 40 Hz light flicker stimulation (40 Hz-LFS) to rescue the cognitive function of model animals with AD has made initial progress, but the neurophysiological mechanism remains unclear. Therefore, this paper will explore the potential neural mechanisms underlying the modulation of SWM by 40 Hz-LFS based on cross-frequency coupling (CFC). Ten adult Wistar rats were first subjected to acute LFS at frequencies of 20, 40, and 60 Hz. The entrainment effect of LFS with different frequency on neural oscillations in the hippocampus (HPC) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was analyzed. The results showed that acute 40 Hz-LFS was able to develop strong entrainment and significantly modulate the oscillation power of the low-frequency gamma (lγ) rhythms. The rats were then randomly divided into experimental and control groups of 5 rats each for a long-term 40 Hz-LFS (7 d). Their SWM function was assessed by a T-maze task, and the CFC changes in the HPC-mPFC circuit were analyzed by phase-amplitude coupling (PAC). The results showed that the behavioral performance of the experimental group was improved and the PAC of θ-lγ rhythm was enhanced, and the difference was statistically significant. The results of this paper suggested that the long-term 40 Hz-LFS effectively improved SWM function in rats, which may be attributed to its enhanced communication of different rhythmic oscillations in the relevant neural circuits. It is expected that the study in this paper will build a foundation for further research on the mechanism of 40 Hz-LFS to improve cognitive function and promote its clinical application in the future.
Objective To explore the evaluation value of burden of amplitudes and epileptiform discharges score (BASED) in the efficacy of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) combined with magnesium sulfate therapy for infantile epileptic spasms syndrome (IESS). Methods Retrospective collection the clinical and EEG data of 124 patients admitted to the Dongguan Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital from 2015 to 2023, who were diagnosed with IESS and treated with ACTH combined with magnesium sulfate. According to whether there were epileptic seizures 14 days after ACTH treatment, the patients were divided into two groups: non seizure group (n=74 cases) and seizure group (n=50 cases). The BASED system was used to evaluate the relationship between changes in EEG before and after ACTH treatment and clinical efficacy in both groups. The analysis of electroencephalogram included: ① abnormally high amplitude background waves, ② >3 spike foci , ③ grouped multifocal spikes, ④ paroxysmal voltage attenuation. ResultThe control rate of ACTH combined with magnesium sulfate in the treatment of IESS was 59.7% (74/124), and there was no statistically significant difference in the control rate among children with different etiologies (P=0.09). The BASED score suggests that the overall response rate of electroencephalogram (EEG) in infants with epileptic spasm syndrome after treatment was 57.2%. The EEG remission rate in the seizure control group was 81% (60/74), while in the uncontrolled group was 22% (11/50). The EEG remission rate in the seizure control group was significantly higher than that in the uncontrolled group after treatment (P<0.001), and the EEG score was closely related to clinical efficacy (Spearman correlation coefficient rp=0.601, P<0.001). ConclusionThe BASED score is related to clinical efficacy, and it can provide a quantitative basis for evaluating the efficacy of ACTH combined with magnesium sulfate in the treatment of IESS.
Transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation is a new non-invasive neuromodulation technology, in which the induced electric field generated by the coupling effect of ultrasound and static magnetic field are used to regulate the neural rhythm oscillation activity in the corresponding brain region. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation on the information transfer and communication in neuronal clusters during memory. In the experiment, twenty healthy adult Wistar rats were randomly divided into a control group (five rats) and stimulation groups (fifteen rats). Transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation of 0.05~0.15 T and 2.66~13.33 W/cm2 was applied to the rats in stimulation groups, and no stimulation was applied to the rats in the control group. The local field potentials signals in the prefrontal cortex of rats during the T-maze working memory tasks were acquired. Then the coupling differences between delta rhythm phase, theta rhythm phase and gamma rhythm amplitude of rats in different parameter stimulation groups and control group were compared. The experimental results showed that the coupling intensity of delta and gamma rhythm in stimulation groups was significantly lower than that in the control group (P<0.05), while the coupling intensity of theta and gamma rhythm was significantly higher than that in the control group (P<0.05). With the increase of stimulation parameters, the degree of coupling between delta and gamma rhythm showed a decreasing trend, while the degree of coupling between theta and gamma rhythm tended to increase. The preliminary results of this paper indicated that transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation inhibited delta rhythmic neuronal activity and enhanced the oscillation of theta and gamma rhythm in the prefrontal cortex, thus promoted the exchange and transmission of information between neuronal clusters in different spatial scales. This lays the foundation for further exploring the mechanism of transcranial magneto-acoustic-electrical stimulation in regulating brain memory function.
The phase lock value(PLV) is an effective method to analyze the phase synchronization of the brain, which can effectively separate the phase components of the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal and reflect the influence of the signal intensity on the functional connectivity. However, the traditional locking algorithm only analyzes the phase component of the signal, and can’t effectively analyze characteristics of EEG signal. In order to solve this problem, a new algorithm named amplitude locking value (ALV) is proposed. Firstly, the improved algorithm obtained intrinsic mode function using the empirical mode decomposition, which was used as input for Hilbert transformation (HT). Then the instantaneous amplitude was calculated and finally the ALV was calculated. On the basis of ALV, the instantaneous amplitude of EEG signal can be measured between electrodes. The data of 14 subjects under different cognitive tasks were collected and analyzed for the coherence of the brain regions during the arithmetic by the improved method. The results showed that there was a negative correlation between the coherence and cognitive activity, and the central and parietal areas were most sensitive. The quantitative analysis by the ALV method could reflect the real biological information. Correlation analysis based on the ALV provides a new method and idea for the research of synchronism, which offer a foundation for further exploring the brain mode of thinking.