Exploring brain functional plasticity in world class gymnasts: a network analysis

Long-term motor skill learning can induce plastic structural and functional reorganization of the brain. Our previous studies detected brain structural plasticity related to long-term intensive gymnastic training in world class gymnasts (WCGs). The goal of this study was to investigate brain functional plasticity in WCGs by using network measures of brain functional networks. Specifically, we acquired resting-state fMRI data from 13 WCGs and 14 controls, constructed their brain functional networks, and compared the differences in their network parameters. At the whole brain level, we detected significantly decreased overall functional connectivity (FC) and decreased local and global efficiency in the WCGs compared to the controls. At the modular level, we found intra- and inter-modular reorganization in three modules, the cerebellum, the cingulo-opercular and fronto-parietal networks, in the WCGs. On the nodal level, we revealed significantly decreased nodal strength and efficiency in several non-rich club regions of these three modules in the WCGs. These results suggested that functional plasticity can be detected in the brain functional networks of WCGs, especially in the cerebellum, fronto-parietal network, and cingulo-opercular network. In addition, we found that the FC between the fronto-parietal network and the sensorimotor network was significantly negatively correlated with the number of years of training in the WCGs. These findings may help us to understand the outstanding gymnastic performance of the gymnasts and to reveal the neural mechanisms that distinguish WCGs from controls.