Transcranial direct current stimulation inhibits epileptic activity propagation in a large-scale brain network model

Transcranial direct current stimulation(tDCS)is a noninvasive technique that uses constant,low-intensity direct current to regulate brain activities.Clinical studies have shown that cathode-tDCS(c-tDCS)is effective in reducing seizure frequency in patients with epilepsy.Due to the heterogeneity and patient specificity of seizures,patient-specific epilepsy networks are increasingly important in exploring the regulatory role of c-tDCS.In this study,we first set the left hippocampus,parahippocampus,and amygdala as the epileptogenic zone(EZ),and the left inferior temporal cortex and ventral temporal cortex as the initial propagation zone(PZ)to establish a large-scale epilepsy network model.Then we set tDCS cathode locations according to the maximum average energy of the simulated EEG signals and systematically study c-tDCS inhibitory effects on the propagation of epileptic activity.The results show that c-tDCS is effective in suppressing the propagation of epileptic activity.Further,to consider the patient specificity,we set specific EZ and PZ according to the clinical diagnosis of 6 patients and establish patient-specific epileptic networks.We find that c-tDCS can suppress the propagation of abnormal activity in most patient-specific epileptic networks.However,when the PZ is widely distributed in both hemispheres,the treatment effect of c-tDCS is not satisfactory.Hence,we propose dual-cathode tDCS.For epilepsy models with a wide distribution of PZ,it can inhibit the propagation of epileptiform activity in other nodes except EZ and PZ without increasing the tDCS current strength.Our results provide theoretical support for the treatment of epilepsy with tDCS.

A Large-Scale Group Decision Making Model Based on Trust Relationship and Social Network Updating

With the development of big data and social computing,large-scale group decisionmaking(LGDM)is nowmerging with social networks.Using social network analysis(SNA),this study proposes an LGDM consensus model that considers the trust relationship among decisionmakers(DMs).In the process of consensusmeasurement:the social network is constructed according to the social relationship among DMs,and the Louvain method is introduced to classify social networks to form subgroups.In this study,the weights of each decision maker and each subgroup are computed by comprehensive network weights and trust weights.In the process of consensus improvement:A feedback mechanism with four identification and two direction rules is designed to guide the consensus of the improvement process.Based on the trust relationship among DMs,the preferences are modified,and the corresponding social network is updated to accelerate the consensus.Compared with the previous research,the proposedmodel not only allows the subgroups to be reconstructed and updated during the adjustment process,but also improves the accuracy of the adjustment by the feedbackmechanism.Finally,an example analysis is conducted to verify the effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed method.Moreover,compared with previous studies,the superiority of the proposed method in solving the LGDM problem is highlighted.

Functional modular organization unfolded by chimera-like dynamics in a large-scale brain network model

The brain is organized as a complex network architecture, which can be mapped into structural(SC) and functional connectivity(FC) by advanced neuroimaging techniques. Achievements in brain network research have revealed that modularity is a universal trait in brain networks and may be vital for cognitive segregation and integration. Large-scale brain network modeling is a promising computational approach to combine neuroimaging data with generative rules for brain dynamics. Recently, it has been proposed that chimera states, a type of dynamics referring to the coexistence of coherent and incoherent participants, have traits in common with cognitive functions like segregated and integrated brain processing. Previous studies have reported the existence of chimera-like dynamics in large-scale brain network models, whereas they did not account for the relationship between chimeralike dynamics and corresponding functional modular organizations of the brain network. By specifying qualitatively different network dynamics in an anatomically-constrained brain network model, we compare the different modular organizations of FC unfolded by network dynamics. Our simulations reveal that chimera-like dynamics support a meaningful pattern of functional modular organization, which promotes a diversity of node roles with a distributed pattern of functional cartography. The distinct node roles in modular FC are also found to occur with a spatial preference in speciflc brain regions, and, to some extent, reflect the underlying structure constraints. Our results support the view that chimera-like dynamics is a functionally meaningful scenario that may play a fundamental role in the segregation and integration of brain functioning.

Epileptic brain network mechanisms and neuroimaging techniques for the brain network

Epilepsy can be defined as a dysfunction of the brain network,and each type of epilepsy involves different brain-network changes that are implicated diffe rently in the control and propagation of interictal or ictal discharges.Gaining more detailed information on brain network alterations can help us to further understand the mechanisms of epilepsy and pave the way for brain network-based precise therapeutic approaches in clinical practice.An increasing number of advanced neuroimaging techniques and electrophysiological techniques such as diffusion tensor imaging-based fiber tra ctography,diffusion kurtosis imaging-based fiber tractography,fiber ball imagingbased tra ctography,electroencephalography,functional magnetic resonance imaging,magnetoencephalography,positron emission tomography,molecular imaging,and functional ultrasound imaging have been extensively used to delineate epileptic networks.In this review,we summarize the relevant neuroimaging and neuroelectrophysiological techniques for assessing structural and functional brain networks in patients with epilepsy,and extensively analyze the imaging mechanisms,advantages,limitations,and clinical application ranges of each technique.A greater focus on emerging advanced technologies,new data analysis software,a combination of multiple techniques,and the construction of personalized virtual epilepsy models can provide a theoretical basis to better understand the brain network mechanisms of epilepsy and make surgical decisions.

Multi-Level Parallel Network for Brain Tumor Segmentation

Accurate automatic segmentation of gliomas in various sub-regions,including peritumoral edema,necrotic core,and enhancing and non-enhancing tumor core from 3D multimodal MRI images,is challenging because of its highly heterogeneous appearance and shape.Deep convolution neural networks(CNNs)have recently improved glioma segmentation performance.However,extensive down-sampling such as pooling or stridden convolution in CNNs significantly decreases the initial image resolution,resulting in the loss of accurate spatial and object parts information,especially information on the small sub-region tumors,affecting segmentation performance.Hence,this paper proposes a novel multi-level parallel network comprising three different level parallel subnetworks to fully use low-level,mid-level,and high-level information and improve the performance of brain tumor segmentation.We also introduce the Combo loss function to address input class imbalance and false positives and negatives imbalance in deep learning.The proposed method is trained and validated on the BraTS 2020 training and validation dataset.On the validation dataset,ourmethod achieved a mean Dice score of 0.907,0.830,and 0.787 for the whole tumor,tumor core,and enhancing tumor core,respectively.Compared with state-of-the-art methods,the multi-level parallel network has achieved competitive results on the validation dataset.

Structural and functional connectivity of the whole brain and subnetworks in individuals with mild traumatic brain injury:predictors of patient prognosis

Patients with mild traumatic brain injury have a diverse clinical presentation,and the underlying pathophysiology remains poorly understood.Magnetic resonance imaging is a non-invasive technique that has been widely utilized to investigate neuro biological markers after mild traumatic brain injury.This approach has emerged as a promising tool for investigating the pathogenesis of mild traumatic brain injury.G raph theory is a quantitative method of analyzing complex networks that has been widely used to study changes in brain structure and function.However,most previous mild traumatic brain injury studies using graph theory have focused on specific populations,with limited exploration of simultaneous abnormalities in structural and functional connectivity.Given that mild traumatic brain injury is the most common type of traumatic brain injury encounte red in clinical practice,further investigation of the patient characteristics and evolution of structural and functional connectivity is critical.In the present study,we explored whether abnormal structural and functional connectivity in the acute phase could serve as indicators of longitudinal changes in imaging data and cognitive function in patients with mild traumatic brain injury.In this longitudinal study,we enrolled 46 patients with mild traumatic brain injury who were assessed within 2 wee ks of injury,as well as 36 healthy controls.Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion-weighted imaging data were acquired for graph theoretical network analysis.In the acute phase,patients with mild traumatic brain injury demonstrated reduced structural connectivity in the dorsal attention network.More than 3 months of followup data revealed signs of recovery in structural and functional connectivity,as well as cognitive function,in 22 out of the 46 patients.Furthermore,better cognitive function was associated with more efficient networks.Finally,our data indicated that small-worldness in the acute stage could serve as a predictor of longitudinal changes in connectivity in patients with mild traumatic brain injury.These findings highlight the importance of integrating structural and functional connectivity in unde rstanding the occurrence and evolution of mild traumatic brain injury.Additionally,exploratory analysis based on subnetworks could serve a predictive function in the prognosis of patients with mild traumatic brain injury.

Assessing target optical camouflage effects using brain functional networks:A feasibility study

Brain functional networks model the brain's ability to exchange information across different regions,aiding in the understanding of the cognitive process of human visual attention during target searching,thereby contributing to the advancement of camouflage evaluation.In this study,images with various camouflage effects were presented to observers to generate electroencephalography(EEG)signals,which were then used to construct a brain functional network.The topological parameters of the network were subsequently extracted and input into a machine learning model for training.The results indicate that most of the classifiers achieved accuracy rates exceeding 70%.Specifically,the Logistic algorithm achieved an accuracy of 81.67%.Therefore,it is possible to predict target camouflage effectiveness with high accuracy without the need to calculate discovery probability.The proposed method fully considers the aspects of human visual and cognitive processes,overcomes the subjectivity of human interpretation,and achieves stable and reliable accuracy.

Resting-state brain network remodeling after different nerve reconstruction surgeries:a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in brachial plexus injury rats

Distinct brain remodeling has been found after different nerve reconstruction strategies,including motor representation of the affected limb.However,differences among reconstruction strategies at the brain network level have not been elucidated.This study aimed to explore intranetwork changes related to altered peripheral neural pathways after different nerve reconstruction surgeries,including nerve repair,endto-end nerve transfer,and end-to-side nerve transfer.Sprague–Dawley rats underwent complete left brachial plexus transection and were divided into four equal groups of eight:no nerve repair,grafted nerve repair,phrenic nerve end-to-end transfer,and end-to-side transfer with a graft sutured to the anterior upper trunk.Resting-state brain functional magnetic resonance imaging was obtained 7 months after surgery.The independent component analysis algorithm was utilized to identify group-level network components of interest and extract resting-state functional connectivity values of each voxel within the component.Alterations in intra-network resting-state functional connectivity were compared among the groups.Target muscle reinnervation was assessed by behavioral observation(elbow flexion)and electromyography.The results showed that alterations in the sensorimotor and interoception networks were mostly related to changes in the peripheral neural pathway.Nerve repair was related to enhanced connectivity within the sensorimotor network,while end-to-side nerve transfer might be more beneficial for restoring control over the affected limb by the original motor representation.The thalamic-cortical pathway was enhanced within the interoception network after nerve repair and end-to-end nerve transfer.Brain areas related to cognition and emotion were enhanced after end-to-side nerve transfer.Our study revealed important brain networks related to different nerve reconstructions.These networks may be potential targets for enhancing motor recovery.

NP-13 Impact of 36 hours of Total Sleep Deprivation on Large-Scale Functional Brain Network Interactions

Background:Sleep deprivation(SD)can potentially lead to deficits in many cognitive capacities,suggesting that sleep pressure represented a basic physiological constraint of brain function.However,the neural mechanism underlying the decline awareness and cognition induced by SD is far from clear.Methods:Thirty-seven healthy male adults were recruited in this within-subjects,repeat-measure,counterbalanced study.These individuals were both examined during a state of rested wakefulness(RW)state and after 36 hours of total SD.Using functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging(fcMRI),we investigated the specifi c effect of SD on static functional connectivity density,sparse representation of resting-state fMRI signal,and dynamic connectivity pattern.Results:Our analysis based on fcMRI revealed that multiple functional networks involved in memory,emotion,attention,and vigilance processing were impaired by SD.Of particular interest,the thalamus was observed to contribute to multiple functional networks in which differentiated response patterns were exhibited.We also detect robust changes in the temporal properties of specifi c connectivity states,such as the occurrence frequencies,dwell times and transition probabilities that were likely associated with the vigilance loss induced by SD.These changes led to differentiation of these states with the RW-dominant states characterized by anti-correlation between the default mode network and other cortices and the SD-dominant states marked by significantly decreased thalamocortical connectivity.Conclusion:These fi ndings suggest specifi c patterns of the large-scale functional brain network changes after SD,which are important for understanding of the impacts of SD on brain function and developing effective intervention strategy against SD.

Scopolamine causes delirium-like brain network dysfunction and reversible cognitive impairment without neuronal loss

Delirium is a severe acute neuropsychiatric syndrome that commonly occurs in the elderly and is considered an independent risk factor for later dementia.However,given its inherent complexity,few animal models of delirium have been established and the mechanism underlying the onset of delirium remains elusive.Here,we conducted a comparison of three mouse models of delirium induced by clinically relevant risk factors,including anesthesia with surgery(AS),systemic inflammation,and neurotransmission modulation.We found that both bacterial lipopolysaccharide(LPS)and cholinergic receptor antagonist scopolamine(Scop)induction reduced neuronal activities in the delirium-related brain network,with the latter presenting a similar pattern of reduction as found in delirium patients.Consistently,Scop injection resulted in reversible cognitive impairment with hyperactive behavior.No loss of cholinergic neurons was found with treatment,but hippocampal synaptic functions were affected.These findings provide further clues regarding the mechanism underlying delirium onset and demonstrate the successful application of the Scop injection model in mimicking delirium-like phenotypes in mice.

Brain Functional Network Based on Small-Worldness and Minimum Spanning Tree for Depression Analysis

Since the outbreak and spread of corona virus disease 2019(COVID-19),the prevalence of mental disorders,such as depression,has continued to increase.To explore the abnormal changes of brain functional connections in patients with depression,this paper proposes a depression analysis method based on brain function network(BFN).To avoid the volume conductor effect,BFN was constructed based on phase lag index(PLI).Then the indicators closely related to depression were selected from weighted BFN based on small-worldness(SW)characteristics and binarization BFN based on the minimum spanning tree(MST).Differences analysis between groups and correlation analysis between these indicators and diagnostic indicators were performed in turn.The resting state electroencephalogram(EEG)data of 24 patients with depression and 29 healthy controls(HC)was used to verify our proposed method.The results showed that compared with HC,the information processing of BFN in patients with depression decreased,and BFN showed a trend of randomization.

Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Network-Based Acoustic Model Using Connectionist Temporal Classification on a Large-Scale Training Corpus

A Long Short-Term Memory(LSTM) Recurrent Neural Network(RNN) has driven tremendous improvements on an acoustic model based on Gaussian Mixture Model(GMM). However, these models based on a hybrid method require a forced aligned Hidden Markov Model(HMM) state sequence obtained from the GMM-based acoustic model. Therefore, it requires a long computation time for training both the GMM-based acoustic model and a deep learning-based acoustic model. In order to solve this problem, an acoustic model using CTC algorithm is proposed. CTC algorithm does not require the GMM-based acoustic model because it does not use the forced aligned HMM state sequence. However, previous works on a LSTM RNN-based acoustic model using CTC used a small-scale training corpus. In this paper, the LSTM RNN-based acoustic model using CTC is trained on a large-scale training corpus and its performance is evaluated. The implemented acoustic model has a performance of 6.18% and 15.01% in terms of Word Error Rate(WER) for clean speech and noisy speech, respectively. This is similar to a performance of the acoustic model based on the hybrid method.

A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Resource Management for Large-Scale UAV Communication Networks

As a result of rapid development in electronics and communication technology,large-scale unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)are harnessed for various promising applications in a coordinated manner.Although it poses numerous advantages,resource management among various domains in large-scale UAV communication networks is the key challenge to be solved urgently.Specifically,due to the inherent requirements and future development trend,distributed resource management is suitable.In this article,we investigate the resource management problem for large-scale UAV communication networks from game-theoretic perspective which are exactly coincident with the distributed and autonomous manner.By exploring the inherent features,the distinctive challenges are discussed.Then,we explore several gametheoretic models that not only combat the challenges but also have broad application prospects.We provide the basics of each game-theoretic model and discuss the potential applications for resource management in large-scale UAV communication networks.Specifically,mean-field game,graphical game,Stackelberg game,coalition game and potential game are included.After that,we propose two innovative case studies to highlight the feasibility of such novel game-theoretic models.Finally,we give some future research directions to shed light on future opportunities and applications.

Progress of Brain Network Studies on Anesthesia and Consciousness: Framework and Clinical Applications

Although the relationship between anesthesia and consciousness has been investigated for decades, our understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms of anesthesia and consciousness remains rudimentary, which limits the development of systems for anesthesia monitoring and consciousness evaluation. Moreover, the current practices for anesthesia monitoring are mainly based on methods that do not provide adequate information and may present obstacles to the precise application of anesthesia. Most recently, there has been a growing trend to utilize brain network analysis to reveal the mechanisms of anesthesia, with the aim of providing novel insights to promote practical application. This review summarizes recent research on brain network studies of anesthesia, and compares the underlying neural mechanisms of consciousness and anesthesia along with the neural signs and measures of the distinct aspects of neural activity. Using the theory of cortical fragmentation as a starting point, we introduce important methods and research involving connectivity and network analysis. We demonstrate that whole-brain multimodal network data can provide important supplementary clinical information. More importantly, this review posits that brain network methods, if simplified, will likely play an important role in improving the current clinical anesthesia monitoring systems.

Multi-Level Deep Generative Adversarial Networks for Brain Tumor Classification on Magnetic Resonance Images

The brain tumor is an abnormal and hysterical growth of brain tissues,and the leading cause of death affected patients worldwide.Even in this technol-ogy-based arena,brain tumor images with proper labeling and acquisition still have a problem with the accurate and reliable generation of realistic images of brain tumors that are completely different from the original ones.The artificially created medical image data would help improve the learning ability of physicians and other computer-aided systems for the generation of augmented data.To over-come the highlighted issue,a Generative Adversarial Network(GAN)deep learn-ing technique in which two neural networks compete to become more accurate in creating artificially realistic data for MRI images.The GAN network contains mainly two parts known as generator and discriminator.Commonly,a generator is the convolutional neural network,and a discriminator is the deconvolutional neural network.In this research,the publicly accessible Contrast-Enhanced Mag-netic Resonance Imaging(CE-MRI)dataset collected from 2005-to 2020 from different hospitals in China consists of four classes has been used.Our proposed method is simple and achieved an accuracy of 96%.We compare our technique results with the existing results,indicating that our proposed technique outper-forms the best results associated with the existing methods.

Efficient Routing Protection Algorithm in Large-Scale Networks

With an increasing urgent demand for fast recovery routing mechanisms in large-scale networks,minimizing network disruption caused by network failure has become critical.However,a large number of relevant studies have shown that network failures occur on the Internet inevitably and frequently.The current routing protocols deployed on the Internet adopt the reconvergence mechanism to cope with network failures.During the reconvergence process,the packets may be lost because of inconsistent routing information,which reduces the network’s availability greatly and affects the Internet service provider’s(ISP’s)service quality and reputation seriously.Therefore,improving network availability has become an urgent problem.As such,the Internet Engineering Task Force suggests the use of downstream path criterion(DC)to address all single-link failure scenarios.However,existing methods for implementing DC schemes are time consuming,require a large amount of router CPU resources,and may deteriorate router capability.Thus,the computation overhead introduced by existing DC schemes is significant,especially in large-scale networks.Therefore,this study proposes an efficient intra-domain routing protection algorithm(ERPA)in large-scale networks.Theoretical analysis indicates that the time complexity of ERPA is less than that of constructing a shortest path tree.Experimental results show that ERPA can reduce the computation overhead significantly compared with the existing algorithms while offering the same network availability as DC.

Structural Connectivity Enhanced Anisotropic 3D Network for Brain Midline Delineation

Brain midline delineation can facilitate the clinical evaluation of brain midline shift,which has a pivotal role in the diagnosis and prognosis of various brain pathology.However,there are still challenges for brain midline delineation:1)the largely deformed midline is hard to localize if mixed with severe cerebral hemorrhage;2)the predicted midlines of recent methods are not smooth and continuous which violates the structural priority.To overcome these challenges,we propose an anisotropic three dimensional(3D)network with context-aware refinement(A3D-CAR)for brain midline modeling.The proposed network fuses 3D context from different two dimensional(2D)slices through asymmetric context fusion.To exploit the elongated structure of the midline,an anisotropic block is designed to balance the difference between the adjacent pixels in the horizontal and vertical directions.For maintaining the structural priority of a brain midline,we present a novel 3D connectivity regular loss(3D CRL)to penalize the disconnectivity between nearby coordinates.Extensive experiments on the CQ dataset and one in-house dataset show that the proposed method outperforms three state-of-the-art methods on four evaluation metrics without excessive computational burden.

Brain Functional Network Generation Using Distribution-Regularized Adversarial Graph Autoencoder with Transformer for Dementia Diagnosis

The topological connectivity information derived from the brain functional network can bring new insights for diagnosing and analyzing dementia disorders.The brain functional network is suitable to bridge the correlation between abnormal connectivities and dementia disorders.However,it is challenging to access considerable amounts of brain functional network data,which hinders the widespread application of data-driven models in dementia diagnosis.In this study,a novel distribution-regularized adversarial graph auto-Encoder(DAGAE)with transformer is proposed to generate new fake brain functional networks to augment the brain functional network dataset,improving the dementia diagnosis accuracy of data-driven models.Specifically,the label distribution is estimated to regularize the latent space learned by the graph encoder,which canmake the learning process stable and the learned representation robust.Also,the transformer generator is devised to map the node representations into node-to-node connections by exploring the long-term dependence of highly-correlated distant brain regions.The typical topological properties and discriminative features can be preserved entirely.Furthermore,the generated brain functional networks improve the prediction performance using different classifiers,which can be applied to analyze other cognitive diseases.Attempts on the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative(ADNI)dataset demonstrate that the proposed model can generate good brain functional networks.The classification results show adding generated data can achieve the best accuracy value of 85.33%,sensitivity value of 84.00%,specificity value of 86.67%.The proposed model also achieves superior performance compared with other related augmentedmodels.Overall,the proposedmodel effectively improves cognitive disease diagnosis by generating diverse brain functional networks.

CNN-LSTM: A Novel Hybrid Deep Neural Network Model for Brain Tumor Classification

Current revelations in medical imaging have seen a slew of computer-aided diagnostic(CAD)tools for radiologists developed.Brain tumor classification is essential for radiologists to fully support and better interpret magnetic resonance imaging(MRI).In this work,we reported on new observations based on binary brain tumor categorization using HYBRID CNN-LSTM.Initially,the collected image is pre-processed and augmented using the following steps such as rotation,cropping,zooming,CLAHE(Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization),and Random Rotation with panoramic stitching(RRPS).Then,a method called particle swarm optimization(PSO)is used to segment tumor regions in an MR image.After that,a hybrid CNN-LSTM classifier is applied to classify an image as a tumor or normal.In this proposed hybrid model,the CNN classifier is used for generating the feature map and the LSTM classifier is used for the classification process.The effectiveness of the proposed approach is analyzed based on the different metrics and outcomes compared to different methods.

Brain Functional Networks with Dynamic Hypergraph Manifold Regularization for Classification of End-Stage Renal Disease Associated with Mild Cognitive Impairment

The structure and function of brain networks have been altered in patients with end-stage renal disease(ESRD).Manifold regularization(MR)only considers the pairing relationship between two brain regions and cannot represent functional interactions or higher-order relationships between multiple brain regions.To solve this issue,we developed a method to construct a dynamic brain functional network(DBFN)based on dynamic hypergraph MR(DHMR)and applied it to the classification of ESRD associated with mild cognitive impairment(ESRDaMCI).The construction of DBFN with Pearson’s correlation(PC)was transformed into an optimization model.Node convolution and hyperedge convolution superposition were adopted to dynamically modify the hypergraph structure,and then got the dynamic hypergraph to form the manifold regular terms of the dynamic hypergraph.The DHMR and L_(1) norm regularization were introduced into the PC-based optimization model to obtain the final DHMR-based DBFN(DDBFN).Experiment results demonstrated the validity of the DDBFN method by comparing the classification results with several related brain functional network construction methods.Our work not only improves better classification performance but also reveals the discriminative regions of ESRDaMCI,providing a reference for clinical research and auxiliary diagnosis of concomitant cognitive impairments.