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Updated: Mar 28, 2026
Dynamic Visual Tests to Identify and Quantify Visual Damage and Repair Following Demyelination in Optic Neuritis Patients
Published on: April 14, 2014
Disturbed spontaneous brain-activity pattern in patients with optic neuritis using amplitude of low-frequency
Xin Huang1, Feng-Qin Cai2, Pei-Hong Hu3
1Department of Ophthalmology, Jiangxi Province Clinical Ophthalmology Institute, First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, People's Republic of China ; Department of Ophthalmology, First People's Hospital of Jiujiang, Jiujiang, People's Republic of China.
Objective:
To use the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) technique to investigate the local features of spontaneous brain activity in optic neuritis (ON) and their relationship with behavioral performance.
Materials And Methods:
Twelve patients with ON (four male, eight female) and twelve age-, sex-, and education status-matched healthy controls (HCs) (four male, eight female) underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scans. The ALFF technique was used to assess local features of spontaneous brain activity. Correlation analysis was used to explore the relationship between the observed mean ALFF values of the different areas and visual evoked potentials (VEPs) in patients with ON.
Results:
Compared with HCs, patients with ON had significantly decreased ALFF values in the posterior and anterior lobes of the right cerebellum, right putamen, right inferior frontal gyrus, right insula, right supramarginal gyrus, right inferior parietal lobule, left medial frontal gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus, bilateral anterior cingulate/medial frontal gyrus, and bilateral precuneus, and significantly increased ALFF values in the posterior lobes of the left and right cerebellum, right inferior temporal gyrus, right inferior temporal/fusiform gyrus, left parahippocampal gyrus, left fusiform gyrus, left calcarine fissure, left inferior parietal lobule, and left cuneus. We found negative correlations between the mean ALFF signal value of the left parahippocampal gyrus and the VEP amplitude of the right eye in ON (r=-0.584, P=0.046), and a positive correlation between the mean ALFF signal value of the bilateral precuneus and the best-corrected visual acuity of the left eye (r=0.579, P=0.048) in patients with ON.
Conclusion:
ON mainly seems to involve dysfunction in the default-mode network, cerebellum, and limbic system, which may reflect the underlying pathologic mechanism of ON.
