Altered brain network centrality in patients with retinal vein occlusion: a resting-state fMRI study

To explore the intrinsic brain activity variations in retinal vein occlusion (RVO) subjects by using the voxel-wise degree centrality (DC) technique.

Twenty-one subjects with RVO and twenty-one healthy controls (HCs) were enlisted and underwent the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) examination. The spontaneous cerebrum activity variations were inspected using the DC technology. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was implemented to distinguish the DC values of RVOs from HCs. The relationships between DC signal of definite regions of interest and the clinical characteristics in RVO group were evaluated by Pearson's correlation analysis.

RVOs showed notably higher DC signals in right superior parietal lobule, middle frontal gyrus and left precuneus, but decreased DC signals in left middle temporal gyrus and bilateral anterior cingulated (BAC) when comparing with HCs. The mean DC value of RVOs in the BAC were negatively correlated with the anxiety and depression scale.

RVO is associated aberrant intrinsic brain activity patterns in several brain areas including pain-related as well as visual-related regions, which might assist to reveal the latent neural mechanisms.