Increased interhemispheric resting-state functional connectivity in functional dyspepsia: a pilot study

Recent brain imaging studies have emphasized the role of regional brain activity abnormalities in the pathophysiology of functional dyspepsia (FD). However, whether the functional connectivity between brain regions is changed, especially between the cerebral hemispheres, in patients with FD remains unknown. Thus, the present study aimed to examine the interhemispheric resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) changes in patients with FD. Resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) was performed in 26 patients with FD and in 20 matched healthy controls. An interhemispheric RSFC map was obtained by calculating the Pearson correlation (Fisher Z transformed) between each pair of homotopic voxel time series for each subject. The between-group difference in interhemispheric RSFC was then examined at global and voxelwise levels separately. The global difference in interhemispheric RSFC between groups was tested using the independent two-sample t-test. Voxelwise comparisons were carried out using a permutation-based nonparametric test, and multiple comparisons across space were corrected using the threshold-free cluster enhancement (TFCE) method. The results showed that patients with FD had higher global interhemispheric RSFC than healthy controls (p < 0.01). Furthermore, voxelwise analysis revealed that patients with FD had increased interhemispheric RSFC in brain regions including the anterior cingulate cortex, insula and thalamus (p < 0.01, TFCE corrected). Our findings provide preliminary evidence of interhemispheric correlation abnormalities in patients with FD and contribute to a better understanding of the pathophysiology of the disease.