Evidence of cortical thickness reduction and disconnection in high myopia

Ya-Jun Wu,Fu-Qing Zhou,Li Yan,Hui Huang,Xiao-Rong Wu,Si-Yu Li,Na Wu,Jie Rao,Ling Shi,Xin Huang

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-73415-3

Ya-Jun Wu, Fu-Qing Zhou + Show 8 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73415-3

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Abstract

High myopia (HM) is associated with impaired long-distance vision. accumulating evidences reported that abnormal visual experience leads to dysfunction in brain activity in HM even corrected. However, whether the long-term of abnormal visual experience lead to neuroanatomical changes remain unknown, the aim at this study is to investigate the alternation of cortical surface thickness in HM patients. 82 patients with HM (HM groups), 57 healthy controls (HC groups) were recruited. All participants underwent high-resolution T1 and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. The cortical thickness analysis was preformed to investigate the neuroanatomical changes in HM patients using computational anatomy toolbox (CAT 12) toolbox. Compare with HCs, HM patients showed decreased the cortical surface thickness in the left middle occipital gyrus (MOG), left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), right inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), right precuneus, right primary visual area 1 (V1), right superior temporal gyrus (STG), right superior parietal lobule (SPL), right occipital pole, and right the primary motor cortex (M1), and increased to the parietal operculum (OP4) (P < 0.01, FWE-corrected), the mean cortical thickness of right orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and right subcallosal cortex showed negatively correlation between clinical variables (axis length (ALM), the average macular thickness (AMT), keratometer (KER) 1, KER2, the mean KER, the mean macular fovea thickness (MFK), the refractive diopter) in HM patients. Our result mainly provided an evidence of cortical thickness reduction and disconnection in visual center and visual processing area, and cortical thickness increase in left multimodal integration region in HM patients. This may provide important significance of the study of the neural mechanism of HM.

Highlights

In this study, we hypothesis that there had cortical thickness reduction in High myopic (HM) patients and it associated with abnormal visual experience and/or local susceptibility
Cortical thickness mapping calculated as the distance between the white matter-gray matter (WM-GM) surfaces, as a fully automated method based on the projection-based thickness (PBT) measurement[9] to provide a local measure of GM within the cortex[12]
In the thickness-related functional connectivity (FC), decreased FC was between left middle occipital gyrus (MOG) and left fusiform gyrus, FC decreased between the left inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) group and the right MOG group, but increased FC was between left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and right superior occipital/PCUN

Summary

Introduction

We hypothesis that there had cortical thickness reduction in HM patients and it associated with abnormal visual experience and/or local susceptibility. Cortical thickness mapping calculated as the distance between the white matter-gray matter (WM-GM) surfaces (approximately 1.6–4.5 mm9–11), as a fully automated method based on the projection-based thickness (PBT) measurement[9] to provide a local measure of GM within the cortex[12]. It was more sensitive when detecting the morphological changes in the region[13,14]. In this study, we investigate the whole-cortical surface thickness and related functional connectivity in MH patients, in order to provide important basis for searching for the alteration of cortical structural plasticity in the context of myopic related abnormal visual experience

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