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.

Brain Functional Network Changes in Patients with Poststroke Cognitive Impairment Following Acupuncture Therapy

Background: The mechanisms by which acupuncture affects poststroke cognitive impairment (PSCI) remain unclear. Objective: To investigate brain functional network (BFN) changes in patients with PSCI after acupuncture therapy. Methods: Twenty-two PSCI patients who underwent acupuncture therapy in our hospital were enrolled as research subjects. Another 14 people matched for age, sex, and education level were included in the normal control (HC) group. All the subjects underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans;the PSCI patients underwent one scan before acupuncture therapy and another after. The network metric difference between PSCI patients and HCs was analyzed via the independent-sample t test, whereas the paired-sample t test was employed to analyze the network metric changes in PSCI patients before vs. after treatment. Results: Small-world network attributes were observed in both groups for sparsities between 0.1 and 0.28. Compared with the HC group, the PSCI group presented significantly lower values for the global topological properties (γ, Cp, and Eloc) of the brain;significantly greater values for the nodal attributes of betweenness centrality in the CUN. L and the HES. R, degree centrality in the SFGdor. L, PCG. L, IPL. L, and HES. R, and nodal local efficiency in the ORBsup. R, ORBsupmed. R, DCG. L, SMG. R, and TPOsup. L;and decreased degree centrality in the MFG. R, IFGoperc. R, and SOG. R. After treatment, PSCI patients presented increased degree centrality in the LING.L, LING.R, and IOG. L and nodal local efficiency in PHG. L, IOG. R, FFG. L, and the HES. L, and decreased betweenness centrality in the PCG. L and CUN. L, degree centrality in the ORBsupmed. R, and nodal local efficiency in ANG. R. Conclusion: Cognitive decline in PSCI patients may be related to BFN disorders;acupuncture therapy may modulate the topological properties of the BFNs of PSCI patients.

Extracting Sub-Networks from Brain Functional Network Using Graph Regularized Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

Currently,functional connectomes constructed from neuroimaging data have emerged as a powerful tool in identifying brain disorders.If one brain disease just manifests as some cognitive dysfunction,it means that the disease may affect some local connectivity in the brain functional network.That is,there are functional abnormalities in the sub-network.Therefore,it is crucial to accurately identify them in pathological diagnosis.To solve these problems,we proposed a sub-network extraction method based on graph regularization nonnegative matrix factorization(GNMF).The dynamic functional networks of normal subjects and early mild cognitive impairment(eMCI)subjects were vectorized and the functional connection vectors(FCV)were assembled to aggregation matrices.Then GNMF was applied to factorize the aggregation matrix to get the base matrix,in which the column vectors were restored to a common sub-network and a distinctive sub-network,and visualization and statistical analysis were conducted on the two sub-networks,respectively.Experimental results demonstrated that,compared with other matrix factorization methods,the proposed method can more obviously reflect the similarity between the common subnetwork of eMCI subjects and normal subjects,as well as the difference between the distinctive sub-network of eMCI subjects and normal subjects,Therefore,the high-dimensional features in brain functional networks can be best represented locally in the lowdimensional space,which provides a new idea for studying brain functional connectomes.

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.

Brain Functional Network Improved by Magnetic Stimulation at Acupoints during Mental Fatigue

To investigate the effects of magnetic stimulation at acupoints on brain functional network during mental fatigue, magnetic stimulation was applied to stimulate SHENMEN (HT7), HEGU (LI4) and LAOGONG (PC8) acupoint in this paper. The brain functional networks of normal state, mental fatigue state and stimulated state were constructed and the characteristic parameters were comparatively studied based on the complex network theory. The results showed that the connection of the network was enhanced by stimulating the HT7, LI4 and PC8 acupoint. In conclusion, magnetic stimulation at acupoints can effectively relieve mental fatigue.

Studies in Brain Functional Networks Based on Complex Networks

The purpose of the paper is to provide a way to model the brain functional network based on the complex networks with brain anatomical architecture. We introduce the brain structural and functional researches, and delineate the brain anatomical and functional networks based on complex networks, then we discuss the brain functional complex network models; at last we put forward the brain functional networks modeling process and the data processing with fMRI （functional magnetic resonance imaging） in detailed.

Extracting Multiple Nodes in a Brain Region of Interest for Brain Functional Network Estimation and Classification

Purpose: Brain functional networks (BFNs) has become important approach for diagnosis of some neurological or psychological disorders. Before estimating BFN, obtaining blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) representative signals from brain regions of interest (ROIs) is important. In the past decades, the common method is generally to take a ROI as a node, averaging all the voxel time series inside it to extract a representative signal. However, one node does not represent the entire information of this ROI, and averaging method often leads to signal cancellation and information loss. Inspired by this, we propose a novel model extraction method based on an assumption that a ROI can be represented by multiple nodes. Methods: In this paper, we first extract multiple nodes (the number is user-defined) from the ROI based on two traditional methods, including principal component analysis (PCA), and K-means (Clustering according to the spatial position of voxels). Then, canonical correlation analysis (CCA) was issued to construct BFNs by maximizing the correlation between the representative signals corresponding to the nodes in any two ROIs. Finally, to further verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the estimated BFNs are applied to identify subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) from health controls (HCs). Results: Experimental results on two benchmark databases demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the baseline method in the sense of classification performance. Conclusions: We propose a novel method for obtaining nodes of ROId based on the hypothesis that a ROI can be represented by multiple nodes, that is, to extract the node signals of ROIs with K-means or PCA. Then, CCA is used to construct BFNs.

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.

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.

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.

Effect of brain functional recovery decoction on expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and Ang-1 protein in a rat cerebral ischemia reperfusion model

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of brain functional recovery decoction(BFRD) on expression of vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF) and angiopoietin-1(Ang-1) protein in rats with cerebral ischemia reperfusion injury, and to explore the mechanism of action of BFRD.METHODS: Using the suture-occlusion method, a Wistar rat model of focal cerebral ischemia reperfusion was established. The rats were randomly divided into treatment group, model group, and sham operation group. The treatment group was administered BFRD. In situ hybridization was used to detect VEGF m RNA expression. Immunohistochemistry was used to observe expression of Ang-1 protein.RESULTS: VEGF mRNA expression was greater in the model group compared with the sham operation group(P < 0.05); Ang-1 protein expression was more obvious in the treatment group than the model group(P < 0.05).CONCLUSION: BFRD promoted VEGF m RNA and Ang-1 protein expression in the brains of rats with cerebral ischemia, suggesting increased angiogenesis.

Elevated brain temperature under severe heat exposure impairs cortical motor activity and executive function

Background:Excessive heat exposure can lead to hyperthermia in humans,which impairs physical performance and disrupts cognitive function.While heat is a known physiological stressor,it is unclear how severe heat stress affects brain physiology and function.Methods:Eleven healthy participants were subjected to heat stress from prolonged exercise or warm water immersion until their rectal temperatures(T_(re))attained 39.5℃,inducing exertional or passive hyperthermia,respectively.In a separate trial,blended ice was ingested before and during exercise as a cooling strategy.Data were compared to a control condition with seated rest(normothermic).Brain temperature(T_(br)),cerebral perfusion,and task-based brain activity were assessed using magnetic resonance imaging techniques.Results:T_(br)in motor cortex was found to be tightly regulated at rest(37.3℃±0.4℃(mean±SD))despite fluctuations in T_(re).With the development of hyperthermia,T_(br)increases and dovetails with the rising T_(re).Bilateral motor cortical activity was suppressed during high-intensity plantarflexion tasks,implying a reduced central motor drive in hyperthermic participants(T_(re)=38.5℃±0.1℃).Global gray matter perfusion and regional perfusion in sensorimotor cortex were reduced with passive hyperthermia.Executive function was poorer under a passive hyperthermic state,and this could relate to compromised visual processing as indicated by the reduced activation of left lateral-occipital cortex.Conversely,ingestion of blended ice before and during exercise alleviated the rise in both T_(re)and T_(bc)and mitigated heat-related neural perturbations.Conclusion:Severe heat exposure elevates T_(br),disrupts motor cortical activity and executive function,and this can lead to impairment of physical and cognitive performance.

Functional brain imaging of gastrointestinal sensation in health and disease

It has since long been known, from everyday experience as well as from animal and human studies, that psychological processes-both affective and cognitive- exert an influence on gastrointestinal sensorimotor function. More specifically, a link between psychological factors and visceral hypersensitivity has been suggested, mainly based on research in functional gastrointestinal disorder patients. However, until recently, the exact nature of this putative relationship remained unclear, mainly due to a lack of non-invasive methods to study the （neurobiological） mechanisms underlying this relationship in non-sleeping humans. As functional brain imaging, introduced in visceral sensory neuroscience some 10 years ago, does provide a method for in vivo study of brain-gut interactions, insight into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying visceral sensation in general and the influence of psychological factors more particularly, has rapidly grown. In this article, an overview of brain imaging evidence on gastrointestinal sensation will be given, with special emphasis on the brain mechanisms underlying the interaction between affective ＆ cognitive processes and visceral sensation. First, the reciprocal neural pathways between the brain and the gut （brain- gut axis） will be briefly outlined, including brain imaging evidence in healthy volunteers. Second, functional brain imaging studies assessing the influence of psychological factors on brain processing of visceral sensation in healthy humans will be discussed in more detail. Finally, brain imaging work investigating differences in brain responses to visceral distension between healthy volunteers and functional gastrointestinal disorder patients will be highlighted.

Analysis of a phase synchronized functional network based on the rhythm of brain activities

Rhythm of brain activities represents oscillations of postsynaptic potentials in neocortex, therefore it can serve as an indicator of the brain activity state. In order to check the connectivity of brain rhythm, this paper develops a new method of constructing functional network based on phase synchronization. Electroencephalogram （EEG） data were collected while subjects looking at a green cross in two states, performing an attention task and relaxing with eyes-open. The EEG from these two states was filtered by three band-pass filters to obtain signals of theta （4-7 Hz）, alpha （8-13 Hz） and beta （14-30 Hz） bands. Mean resultant length was used to estimate strength of phase synchronization in three bands to construct networks of both states, and mean degree K and cluster coefficient C of networks were calculated as a function of threshold. The result shows higher cluster coetticient in the attention state than in the eyes-open state in all three bands, suggesting that cluster coefficient reflects brain state. In addition, an obvious fronto-parietal network is found in the attention state, which is a well-known attention network. These results indicate that attention modulates the fronto-parietal connectivity in different modes as compared with the eyes-open state. Taken together this method is an objective and important tool to study the properties of neural networks of brain rhythm,

Activation of brain areas following ankle dorsiflexion versus plantar flexion Functional magnetic resonance imaging verification

Changes in activated areas of the brain during ankle active dorsiflexion and ankle active plantar flexion were observed in six healthy subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Excited areas of ankle active dorsiflexion involved the bilateral primary motor area and the primary somatosensory area, as well as the bilateral supplementary sensory area, the primary visual area, the right second visual area, and the vermis of cerebellum. Excited areas of ankle active plantar flexion included the ipsilateral supplementary motor area, the limbic system, and the contralateral corpus striatum. Fine movements of the cerebral cortex control the function of the ankle dorsiflexion to a larger extent than ankle plate flexion, and the function of ankle plate flexion is more controlled by the subcortical area.

Functional brain imaging studies on specificity of meridian and acupoints

At present, the specificity of meridians and acupoints has been studied using functional brain imaging techniques from many standpoints, including meridians, acupoints, and sham acupoints, as well as different meridians and acupoints, coordination of acupoints, and factors influencing meridian and acupoint specificity Preliminary experimental data have demonstrated that acupuncture at meridians and acupoints is specific with regard to brain neural information. However, research findings are contradictory, which may be related to brain functional complexity, resolution of functional brain imaging techniques, and experimental design. Future studies should further improve study method, and should strictly control experimental conditions to better analyze experimental data and acquire more beneficial data. Because of its many advantages, the functional brain imaging technique is a promising method for studying meridian and acupoint specificity.

Mapping brain functional and structural abnormities in autism spectrum disorder:moving toward precision treatment

Autism spectrum disorder(ASD)is a formidable challenge for psychiatry and neuroscience because of its high prevalence,lifelong nature,complexity,and substantial heterogeneity.A major goal of neuroimaging studies of ASD is to understand the neurobiological underpinnings of this disorder from multi-dimensional and multi-level perspectives,by investigating how brain anatomy,function,and connectivity are altered in ASD,and how they vary across the population.However,ongoing debate exists within those studies,and neuroimaging findings in ASD are often contradictory.Over the past decade,we have dedicated to delineate a comprehensive and consistent mapping of the abnormal structure and function of the autistic brain,and this review synthesizes the findings across our studies reaching a consensus that the“social brain”are the most affected regions in the autistic brain at different levels and modalities.We suggest that the social brain network can serve as a plausible biomarker and potential target for effective intervention in individuals with ASD.

Functional Brain Network Learning Based on Spatial Similarity for Brain Disorders Identification

Functional brain network (FBN) measures based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, has become important biomarkers for early diagnosis and prediction of clinical outcomes in neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s diseases (AD) and its prodromal state (i.e., Mild cognitive impairment, MCI). In the past decades, researchers have developed numbers of approaches for FBN estimation, including Pearson’s correction (PC), sparse representation (SR), and so on. Despite their popularity and wide applications in current studies, most of the approaches for FBN estimation only consider the dependency between the measured blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) time series, but ignore the spatial relationships between pairs of brain regions. In practice, the strength of functional connection between brain regions will decrease as their distance increases. Inspired by this, we proposed a new approach for FBN estimation based on the assumption that the closer brain regions tend to share stronger relationships or similarities. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conduct experiments on a public dataset to identify the patients with MCIs from health controls (HCs) using the estimated FBNs. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach yields statistically significant improvement in seven performance metrics over using the baseline methods.

Consistent and Specific Multi-View Functional Brain Networks Fusion for Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis

Functional brain networks (FBN) based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) have become an important tool for exploring underlying organization patterns in the brain, which can provide an objective basis for brain disorders such as autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). Due to its importance, researchers have proposed a number of FBN estimation methods. However, most existing methods only model a type of functional connection relationship between brain regions-of-interest (ROIs), such as partial correlation or full correlation, which is difficult to fully capture the subtle connections among ROIs since these connections are extremely complex. Motivated by the multi-view learning, in this study we propose a novel Consistent and Specific Multi-view FBNs Fusion (CSMF) approach. Concretely, we first construct multi-view FBNs (i.e., multiple types of FBNs modelling various relationships among ROIs), and then these FBNs are decomposed into a consistent representation matrix and their own specific matrices which capture their common and unique information, respectively. Lastly, to obtain a better brain representation, it is fusing the consistent and specific representation matrices in the latent representation spaces of FBNs, but not directly fusing the original FBNs. This potentially makes it more easily to find the comprehensively brain connections. The experimental results of ASD identification on the ABIDE datasets validate the effectiveness of our proposed method compared to several state-of-the-art methods. Our proposed CSMF method achieved 72.8% and 76.67% classification performance on the ABIDE dataset.

Functional regeneration of the brain:white matter matters

In the human brain, white matter makes up about 50% of the brain volume and consumes 43.8% of the brain＇s total energy budget for resting potential maintenance （Harris and Attwell, 2012）. Composed of primarily myelinated axons, the white matter is the ＂highways and subways of the brain＂ connecting one region to another and trafficking in and out of the grey matter. In the myelinated nerve fibers, layers of myelin sheaths wrap around each axon to provide protection and insulation to the axon and to allow rapid conduction of action potentials. Myelin establishment and maintenance is considered a crucial requirement for fully functional con- nections between neurons in the central nerve system （CNS）.