Cerebral and functional adaptation with chronic hypoxia exposure: a multi-modal MRI study

The current study obtained multi-modal MRI data from 28 immigrant high altitude (HA) young adults who were born and grew up at Qinghai-Tibetan plateau matched with 28 matched sea level (SL) controls. We compared their regional gray matter volumes (VBM) and white matter quality (DAI FA values) as well as resting state brain activity (Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) of BOLD-fMRI). We found that HA residents showed decreased gray matter volume at bilateral anterior insula, bilateral prefrontal cortex, the left precentral, the left cingulate and the right lingual cortex; accompanied by changed FA and ReHo values in relevant and other regions. The resting state activity at the hippocampus and the right insula were increasing with SL relocation. The HA subjects performed worse on a series of working memory tasks, with the ReHo values of several regions as significant predictors of their performance. This study demonstrated the cerebral and functional modifications with chronic high altitude hypoxia.