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Updated: Nov 4, 2025
Cerebral Blood Flow-Based Resting State Functional Connectivity of the Human Brain using Optical Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy
Published on: May 27, 2020
Resting state brain network functional connectivity is not associated with inflammatory markers and blood cell counts
Gregor Lichtner1, Norman Zacharias2, Claudia D Spies2
1Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Klinik für Anästhesiologie mit Schwerpunkt operative Intensivmedizin (CCM, CVK), Berlin, Germany; Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Institute of Medical Informatics, Berlin, Germany.
Objective:
Systemic inflammation and monocyte counts have previously been associated with changes in resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) in cross-sectional neuroimaging studies. We therefore investigated this association in a longitudinal study of older patients.
Methods:
We performed a secondary analysis of longitudinal data from older patients who underwent functional magnet resonance imaging (fMRI) scans before and 3 months after elective surgery. Additionally, serum levels of C-reactive protein and Interleukin-6 as markers of inflammation and leukocyte, lymphocyte and monocyte counts were determined. Correlations between these markers and pre- or postoperative rsFC between regions previously associated with inflammatory markers were investigated using general linear regression models.
Results:
We found no significant correlations between inflammatory markers or blood cell counts and mean connectivity within four resting state networks (RSNs), neither preoperatively nor postoperatively. Significant inter-region rsFC was found within these RSNs between a few regions either pre- or postoperatively, but no inter-region connections were consistently observed in both pre- and postoperative fMRI scans.
Conclusions:
Inflammatory markers and monocyte counts were not associated with rsFC in our study, contrasting previous results.
Significance:
Multiple measurements in the same individuals, as performed here, provide a way to reduce the high risk of false positive results in fMRI studies.
Trial Registration:
Clinicaltrials.gov (registration number NCT02265263).
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