科研之友
微信
新浪微博
Facebook
分享链接
摘要
Objective: Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that comitant exotropia (CE) showed significant brain functional and anatomical changes, whereas alterations of interhemispheric functional connectivity (FC) in CE patients at rest are not well studied. This study investigated the interhemispheric FC of the whole brain in CE patients using voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) and their relationship with clinical features. Methods: Thirty-two comitant strabismus patients (25 males and 7 females) were enrolled in the study and 32 (25 males and 7 females) education-and age-matched healthy controls (HCs) were evaluated by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) examinations. The VMHC method was used to evaluate directly the functional interactions between the hemispheres. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analyses had been used to identify the VMHC in these brain areas, which could be used as biomarkers to distinguish CEs and from HC. The relationship between the mean VMHC signal values in many brain regions and clinical features in these patients was evaluated by Pearson correlation analysis. Results: Compared with HCs, CE patients showed significantly lower VMHC values in the bilateral precentral gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and superior parietal lobule. Higher VMHC values occurred in the bilateral superior temporal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus in CE patients. However, there was no relationship between the mean VMHC signal values of the different areas and clinical manifestations in CE patients. Conclusion: CE patients have abnormal interhemispheric functional connectivity in many regions, which may indicate the dysfunction of eye movements and visual fusion function in the CE patients.
