Assessing functional connectivity of brainstem nuclei in fMRI data

作者：Cai, Jiayue; Wang, Z. Jane; Lee, Soojin; McKeown, Martin J.

来源：5th IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing, GlobalSIP 2017, Montreal, QC, Canada, 2017-11-14 To 2017-11-16.

DOI：10.1109/GlobalSIP.2017.8308627

• Brain stem
• Functional connectivity
• Functional MRI
• Parkinson's disease
• Pedunculopontine nucleus

The functional connectivity of brainstem nuclei with other cortical and subcortical regions (brainstem-brain connectivity) has not yet been completely delineated. The objective of this study was to model the brainstem-brain connectivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signals. We proposed a novel two-step framework for brainstem-brain connectivity estimation based on partial least squares (PLS) and Bayesian networks. We applied the proposed framework to investigating the functional connectivity between the pedun-culopontine nucleus (PPN), a brainstem nucleus critical for the control of locomotion, and other cortical and subcortical regions (PPN-brain connectivity) in Parkinson's disease (PD). We further examined the impact that the galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS), a process of sending specific electric messages to a nerve in the ear that maintains balance, could have on the PPN-brain connectivity in PD. The results suggest that the PPN-brain connectivity can be reliably assessed by our proposed framework, and the GVS can affect the PPN-brain connectivity in a stimulus-dependent manner. Our work is potentially useful for the future clinical studies, facilitating the understanding of how the PPN interacts with other brain regions to involve in the control of locomotion, and providing insights into the mechanism through which the GVS assists balance in PD.

• 出版日期2017