Diffusion functional MRI reveals global brain network functional abnormalities driven by targeted local activity in a neuropsychiatric disease mouse model
Yoshifumi Abe,
Norio Takata,
Yuki Sakai,
Hiro Taiyo Hamada,
Yuichi Hiraoka,
Tomomi Aida,
Kohichi Tanaka,
Denis Le Bihan,
Kenji Doya,
Kenji F Tanaka
Affiliations
Yoshifumi Abe
Departemnt of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan; Corresponding author.
Norio Takata
Departemnt of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
Yuki Sakai
ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratory Group, Kyoto, Japan; Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan
Hiro Taiyo Hamada
Neural Computation Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa, Japan
Yuichi Hiraoka
Department of Molecular Neuroscience, Medical Research Institute, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
Tomomi Aida
Department of Molecular Neuroscience, Medical Research Institute, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
Kohichi Tanaka
Department of Molecular Neuroscience, Medical Research Institute, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
Denis Le Bihan
NeuroSpin, Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives, Gif-sur-Yvette, France; Department of System Neuroscience, National Institutes for Physiological Sciences, Okazaki, Japan
Kenji Doya
Neural Computation Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa, Japan
Kenji F Tanaka
Departemnt of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
Diffusion functional magnetic resonance imaging (DfMRI) has been proposed as an alternative functional imaging method to detect brain activity without confounding hemodynamic effects. Here, taking advantage of this DfMRI feature, we investigated abnormalities of dynamic brain function in a neuropsychiatric disease mouse model (glial glutamate transporter-knockdown mice with obsessive–compulsive disorder [OCD]-related behavior). Our DfMRI approaches consisted of three analyses: resting state brain activity, functional connectivity, and propagation of neural information. We detected hyperactivation and biased connectivity across the cortico-striatal-thalamic circuitry, which is consistent with known blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD)-fMRI patterns in OCD patients. In addition, we performed ignition-driven mean integration (IDMI) analysis, which combined activity and connectivity analyses, to evaluate neural propagation initiated from brain activation. This analysis revealed an unbalanced distribution of neural propagation initiated from intrinsic local activation to the global network, while these were not detected by the conventional method with BOLD-fMRI. This abnormal function detected by DfMRI was associated with OCD-related behavior. Together, our comprehensive DfMRI approaches can successfully provide information on dynamic brain function in normal and diseased brains.
