Early stage of radiological expertise modulates resting-state local coherence in the inferior temporal lobe

The visual system and its inherent functions undergo experience-dependent changes through the lifespan, enabling acquisition of new skills. Previous fMRI studies using tasks reported increased specialization in a number of cortical regions subserving visual expertise. Although ample studies focused on representation of long-term visual expertise in the brain, i.e. in terms of year, monthly-based early-stage representation of visual expertise remains unstudied. Given that spontaneous neuronal oscillations actively encode previous experience, we propose brain representations in the resting state is fundamentally important.

The current study aimed to investigate how monthly-based early-stage visual expertise are represented in the resting state using the expertise model of radiologists.

In particular, we investigated the altered local clustering pattern of spontaneous brain activity using regional homogeneity (ReHo). A cohort group of radiology interns (n = 22) after one-month training in X-ray department and matched laypersons (n = 22) were recruited after rigorous behavioral assessment.

The results showed higher ReHo in the right hippocampus (HIP) and the right ventral anterior temporal lobe (vATL) (corrected by Alphasim correction, P < 0.05). Moreover, ReHo in the right HIP correlated with the number of cases reviewed during intern radiologists' training (corrected by Alphasim correction, P < 0.05).

In sum, our results demonstrated that the early stage of visual expertise is more concerned with stabilizing visual feature and domain-specific knowledge into long-term memory. The results provided novel evidence regarding how early-stage visual expertise is represented in the resting brain, which help further elaborate how human visual expertise is acquired. We propose that our current study may provide novel ideas for developing new training protocols in medical schools.