Abstract
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common functional gastrointestinal disorder resulting from a dysregulation of the brain-gut axis. However, its exact neural substrate still remains unclear. This study investigated the changes of intrinsic whole brain functional connectivity pattern in IBS using functional connectivity density (FCD). We acquired resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data from thirty-two IBS patients and thirty-two healthy controls. Functional connectivity density, a data-driven algorithm, was used to compute the long-range and short-range FCD values for each voxel in the brain of each subject, implying the amount of distant and local functional connections of cortical hubs. The FCD maps were compared between IBS patients and healthy controls. Pearson correlations analysis was also performed between abnormal FCD values and clinical/psychometric scores in patients. Compared to healthy controls, IBS patients showed concurrently decreased long- and short-range FCD in bilateral anterior midcingulate cortices (aMCC) and inferior parietal lobules (IPL), and decreased long-range FCD in right anterior insula, and decreased short-range FCD in bilateral prefrontal cortices, subgenual anterior cingulate cortices and caudates. IBS patients also had concurrently increased long- and short-range FCD mainly in primary sensorimotor cortices, as well as increased long-range FCD in right supplementary motor area and increased short-range FCD in occipital lobe. In addition, some regions with altered FCD showed abnormal functional connectivity in brain regions involved in pain matrix of IBS patients. Furthermore, the abnormal FCD values in right anterior insula and left caudate showed significant correlation with severity of symptoms and disease duration of IBS patients respectively. In conclusion, patients with IBS have widely disrupted FCD, which decreased in brain regions involved in homeostatic afferent network, emotional arouse, and cognitive regulation, while increased in regions associated with sensorimotor modulation. And the observed functional connectivity alterations unveiled complicated working patterns of pain matrix in IBS patients. This study may provide us with new insight into the underlying brain network topology of IBS.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Natural Scientific Foundation of China [Grant Nos. 81322020, 81230032 and 81171313 for Long Jiang Zhang, Grant Nos. 81301209 and 81671672 for Rongfeng Qi], the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in the University (NCET-12-0260 for Long Jiang Zhang), and the Chinese Key Program (Grant Nos. BWS11J063 and 10z026 for Guang Ming Lu).
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Yifei Weng declares that she has no conflict of interest.
Rongfeng Qi declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Chang Liu declares that she has no conflict of interest.
Jun Ke declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Qiang Xu declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Fangyu Wang declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Long Jiang Zhang declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Guang Ming Lu declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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Yifei Weng, Rongfeng Qi and Chang Liu contributed equally to this work
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Weng, Y., Qi, R., Liu, C. et al. Disrupted functional connectivity density in irritable bowel syndrome patients. Brain Imaging and Behavior 11, 1812–1822 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-016-9653-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-016-9653-z