Abstract
Cigarette smoking is a chronic relapsing brain disorder, and remains a premier cause of morbidity and mortality. Functional neuroimaging has been used to assess differences in the mean strength of brain activity in smokers’ brains, however less is known about the temporal dynamics within smokers’ brains. Temporal dynamics is a key feature of a dynamic system such as the brain, and may carry information critical to understanding the brain mechanisms underlying cigarette smoking. We measured the temporal dynamics of brain activity using brain entropy (BEN) mapping and compared BEN between chronic non-deprived smokers and non-smoking controls. Because of the known sex differences in neural and behavioral smoking characteristics, comparisons were also made between males and females. Associations between BEN and smoking related clinical measures were assessed in smokers. Our data showed globally higher BEN in chronic smokers compared to controls. The escalated BEN was associated with more years of smoking in the right limbic area and frontal region. Female nonsmokers showed higher BEN than male nonsmokers in prefrontal cortex, insula, and precuneus, but the BEN sex difference in smokers was less pronounced. These findings suggest that BEN mapping may provide a useful tool for probing brain mechanisms related to smoking.
Highlights
Strength of coupling correlated with the smoking-cue induced brain activity in dorsal striatum[13]
Since functional connectivity (FC) is derived from the coupling between two or more brain regions, one complementary and important research interest is to find a direct measure of regional resting brain activity, which can be subsequently used for brain function or brain deficit localization
With fMRI, we have recently demonstrated that regional brain entropy (BEN) can be reliably mapped in the normal brain[20,21]
Summary
Strength of coupling correlated with the smoking-cue induced brain activity in dorsal striatum[13]. Since FC is derived from the coupling between two or more brain regions, one complementary and important research interest is to find a direct measure of regional resting brain activity, which can be subsequently used for brain function or brain deficit localization. Far to our knowledge, there was only one such study published in the realm of cigarette smoking[16], which examined the regional resting state activity using the regional homogeneity (ReHo). A novel technique has recently been evaluated by our group and others, referred to as brain entropy (BEN) mapping, which provides a direct means to quantify the regional resting state brain activity dynamics[18,19,20,21,22,23]. Because sex differences profoundly affect brain and behavioral endpoints in smokers, as well as treatment response and ability to remain abstinent[34,35,36,37], differences in BEN between female and male chronic smokers were explored
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