A Resting-State fMRI Study of Static and Dynamic Graph Analysis for Seafarer’ Brain

Abstract

In order to explore the influence of the marine environment on the topological properties of seafarers’ brain functional connectivity networks and the specificity of the topological structure of seafarers’ brain compared with that of non-seafarers, the fMRI data of 33 seafarers before and after sailing as well as the data of 33 non-seafarers are used to explore the differences of topological structure between them from both static and dynamic brain functional connectivity networks among the 90 brain regions of AAL template in this study. The results show that the marine environment has a time-dependent influence on the topological structure of seafarers’ brain functional networks, especially for the dynamic brain functional networks, which means that some topological changes can be recovered in a relatively short time, while others may have long-term effects to form the unique topological characteristics of brain functions for seafarers. These results have an important reference value to further explore seafarers’ professional brain plasticity.