Temporal variability of regional intrinsic neural activity in drug-naïve patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder

• Main Authors: Bu, X. (Author), Cao, L. (Author), Gao, Y. (Author), Gong, Q. (Author), Hu, X. (Author), Huang, X. (Author), Li, H. (Author), Liang, K. (Author), Liu, J. (Author), Lu, L. (Author), Wang, Y. (Author), Zhang, L. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: John Wiley and Sons Inc 2021
• Subjects: adult; Adult; algorithm; amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation; Article; brain cortex; brain function; brain region; cerebellum; Cerebellum; Cerebral Cortex; connectome; Connectome; controlled study; corpus striatum; Corpus Striatum; correlation analysis; cuneus; diagnostic accuracy; diagnostic imaging; disease duration; dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation; electroencephalogram; female; Female; functional magnetic resonance imaging; fusiform gyrus; Hamilton Depression Rating Scale; human; Humans; image analysis; inferior parietal lobule; insula; left hemisphere; linear support vector machine; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; major clinical study; male; Male; medial prefrontal cortex; middle occipital gyrus; multivariate analysis; multivariate pattern analysis; nerve cell network; nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; obsessive compulsive disorder; obsessive–compulsive disorder; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; pathophysiology; posterior cingulate; receiver operating characteristic; reproducibility; resting state network; resting-state fMRI; temporal analysis; thalamus; time factor; Time Factors; univariate analysis; young adult; Young Adult
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) displays alterations in regional brain activity represented by the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), but the time-varying characteristics of this local neural activity remain to be clarified. We aimed to investigate the dynamic changes of intrinsic brain activity in a relatively large sample of drug-naïve OCD patients using univariate and multivariate analyses. We applied a sliding-window approach to calculate the dynamic ALFF (dALFF) and compared the difference between 73 OCD patients and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). We also utilized multivariate pattern analysis to determine whether dALFF could differentiate OCD patients from HCs at the individual level. Compared with HCs, OCD patients exhibited increased dALFF mainly within regions of the cortical–striatal–thalamic–cortical (CSTC) circuit, including the bilateral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex and striatum, and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Decreased dALFF was identified in the bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL), posterior cingulate cortex, insula, fusiform gyrus, and cerebellum. Moreover, we found negative correlations between illness duration and dALFF values in the right IPL and between dALFF values in the left cerebellum and Hamilton Depression Scale scores. Furthermore, dALFF can distinguish OCD patients from HCs with the most discriminative regions located in the IPL, dlPFC, middle occipital gyrus, and cuneus. Taken together, in the current study, we demonstrated a characteristic pattern of higher variability of regional brain activity within the CSTC circuits and lower variability in regions outside the CSTC circuits in drug-naïve OCD patients. © 2021 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.