Glans penis electric stimulation modulates cerebral activity and functional connectivity in lifelong premature...

To compare brain activation in the dopaminergic reward system between 26 LPE patients and 16 normal controls (NCs) via glans penis electric stimulation task-fMRI and resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI). The beta value, degree centrality (DC), and functional connectivity (FC) were calculated. The Pearson correlation was used to analyze the correlation between the fMRI measurements and disease severity. After task-fMRI, PE patients had significantly higher beta values in the dopaminergic reward system, including the bilateral thalamus and inferior frontal gyrus than NCs. In the rs-fMRI, higher DC values in the bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA) and lower DC values in the bilateral precuneus were found. Furthermore, our results showed enhanced FC between the right inferior frontal gyrus and the bilateral SMA and decreased FC between the bilateral precuneus and bilateral thalamus after electrical stimulation. The sensitivity was 80.77%, the specificity was 81.25%, and the AUC was 0.83 (p < 0.001) when differentiating the PE and NC using the FC between the inferior frontal gyrus and SMA. The sensitivity was 73.08%, the specificity was 75.00%, and the AUC was 0.82 (P = 0.002) when differentiating the two groups using the FC between the precuneus and thalamus.