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Utility of Dissociated Intrinsic Hand Muscle Atrophy in the Diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Published on: March 4, 2014
Frequency-specific alterations in the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations in amyotrophic lateral
Xujing Ma1,2, Jiuquan Zhang3, Youxue Zhang1
1Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
This study used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) method to investigate low-frequency spontaneous neural activity at the bands of slow-5 (0.01-0.027 Hz) and slow-4 (0.027-0.073 Hz) in 20 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and 20 healthy controls. We determined that, at slow-5 band, patients with ALS showed increased fALFF in the right middle frontal gyrus and decreased fALFF in the left middle occipital gyrus. However, compared with healthy controls, patients with ALS exhibited higher fALFF in the right caudate nucleus, left superior frontal gyrus, and right anterior cingulate cortex and lower fALFF in the right inferior occipital gyrus and bilateral middle occipital gyrus at slow-4 band. Furthermore, the fALFF value in the left superior frontal gyrus at slow-4 band was negatively correlated with functional rating scale-revised score. Our results demonstrated that the fALFF changes in ALS were widespread and frequency dependent. These findings may provide a novel way to look into the pathophysiology mechanisms underlying ALS.
