Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (Nov 2018)

Aberrant prefrontal–parietal–cerebellar circuits in alcohol dependence

  • Liu R,
  • Liu BX,
  • Ma M,
  • Kong D,
  • Li G,
  • Yang J,
  • Wu X,
  • Zheng J,
  • Dong Y

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 14
pp. 3143 – 3150

Abstract

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Run Liu,1,* Bi-Xia Liu,2,* Mingyue Ma,1,* Dan Kong,3,* Guanglin Li,4 Junle Yang,1 Xiaoping Wu,1 Jiyong Zheng,3 Yan Dong1 1Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Xi’an Central Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710004 Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of ICU, Jiangxi Provincial Cancer Hospital, Nanchang, 330029 Jiangxi, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Medical Imaging, The Affiliated Huaian No. 1 People’s Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Huaian, 223300 Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China; 4Honghui Hospital, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710054 Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Objective: To identify whether the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) analysis has the potential to serve as a biological marker to detect alcohol-induced spontaneous brain activities and distinguish the patients with alcohol dependence from the healthy subjects. Methods: We utilized the ALFF analysis to report on the alcohol-induced spontaneous brain activities in 29 patients with alcohol dependence (9 female, 20 male) relative to 29 status-matched healthy subjects (11 female, 18 male). Receiver operating characteristic curve was used to test the ability of the ALFF analysis in discriminating the patients with alcohol dependence from the healthy subjects. Pearson correlation was used to evaluate the relationships between the signal value of those ALFF differences in brain areas and behavioral characteristics. Results: Alcohol-induced brain differences located in the right inferior parietal lobule and right supplementary motor area with significant higher ALFF values, and in the left precuneus and bilateral cerebellum posterior lobe with lower ALFF values. The movement-related areas were significantly correlated with each other (P<0.05). Receiver operating characteristic curve revealed good area under the curve values (mean, 0.86±0.079; 0.774–0.951) of the ALFF differences in those specific brain areas, as well as high degree of sensitivities (mean, 80.84%±14.01% or 80%±14.56%; 62.5%–100%) and specificities (mean, 83.32%±9.31%; 70.8%–95.8% or 84.16%±8%; 75%–95.8%). Conclusion: The ALFF analysis may serve as a biological indicator to detect the spontaneous brain activities in patients with alcohol dependence. The prefrontal–parietal–cerebellar circuit appears to be disturbed by long-term alcoholism in patients with alcohol dependence. Keywords: alcohol dependence, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations, receiver operating characteristic

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