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A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches

Functional connectivity between brain regions during swallowing tasks is still not well understood. Understanding these complex interactions is of great interest from both a scientific and a clinical perspective. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was utilized to study brain...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Luan, Bo, Sörös, Peter, Sejdić, Ervin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3756959/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24009758
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073577
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author Luan, Bo
Sörös, Peter
Sejdić, Ervin
author_facet Luan, Bo
Sörös, Peter
Sejdić, Ervin
author_sort Luan, Bo
collection PubMed
description Functional connectivity between brain regions during swallowing tasks is still not well understood. Understanding these complex interactions is of great interest from both a scientific and a clinical perspective. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was utilized to study brain functional networks during voluntary saliva swallowing in twenty-two adult healthy subjects (all females, [Image: see text] years of age). To construct these functional connections, we computed mean partial correlation matrices over ninety brain regions for each participant. Two regions were determined to be functionally connected if their correlation was above a certain threshold. These correlation matrices were then analyzed using graph-theoretical approaches. In particular, we considered several network measures for the whole brain and for swallowing-related brain regions. The results have shown that significant pairwise functional connections were, mostly, either local and intra-hemispheric or symmetrically inter-hemispheric. Furthermore, we showed that all human brain functional network, although varying in some degree, had typical small-world properties as compared to regular networks and random networks. These properties allow information transfer within the network at a relatively high efficiency. Swallowing-related brain regions also had higher values for some of the network measures in comparison to when these measures were calculated for the whole brain. The current results warrant further investigation of graph-theoretical approaches as a potential tool for understanding the neural basis of dysphagia.
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spelling pubmed-37569592013-09-05 A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches Luan, Bo Sörös, Peter Sejdić, Ervin PLoS One Research Article Functional connectivity between brain regions during swallowing tasks is still not well understood. Understanding these complex interactions is of great interest from both a scientific and a clinical perspective. In this study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was utilized to study brain functional networks during voluntary saliva swallowing in twenty-two adult healthy subjects (all females, [Image: see text] years of age). To construct these functional connections, we computed mean partial correlation matrices over ninety brain regions for each participant. Two regions were determined to be functionally connected if their correlation was above a certain threshold. These correlation matrices were then analyzed using graph-theoretical approaches. In particular, we considered several network measures for the whole brain and for swallowing-related brain regions. The results have shown that significant pairwise functional connections were, mostly, either local and intra-hemispheric or symmetrically inter-hemispheric. Furthermore, we showed that all human brain functional network, although varying in some degree, had typical small-world properties as compared to regular networks and random networks. These properties allow information transfer within the network at a relatively high efficiency. Swallowing-related brain regions also had higher values for some of the network measures in comparison to when these measures were calculated for the whole brain. The current results warrant further investigation of graph-theoretical approaches as a potential tool for understanding the neural basis of dysphagia. Public Library of Science 2013-08-29 /pmc/articles/PMC3756959/ /pubmed/24009758 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073577 Text en © 2013 Luan et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Luan, Bo
Sörös, Peter
Sejdić, Ervin
A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches
title A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches
title_full A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches
title_fullStr A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches
title_full_unstemmed A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches
title_short A Study of Brain Networks Associated with Swallowing Using Graph-Theoretical Approaches
title_sort study of brain networks associated with swallowing using graph-theoretical approaches
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3756959/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24009758
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073577
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