title: Altered spontaneous activity in anisometropic amblyopia subjects: revealed by resting-state FMRI.
abstract: Amblyopia, also known as lazy eye, usually occurs during early childhood and results in poor or blurred vision. Recent neuroimaging studies have found cortical structural/functional abnormalities in amblyopia. However, until now, it was still not known whether the spontaneous activity of the brain changes in amblyopia subjects. In the present study, regional homogeneity (ReHo), a measure of the homogeneity of functional magnetic resonance imaging signals, was used for the first time to investigate changes in resting-state local spontaneous brain activity in individuals with anisometropic amblyopia. Compared with age- and gender-matched subjects with normal vision, the anisometropic amblyopia subjects showed decreased ReHo of spontaneous brain activity in the right precuneus, the left medial prefrontal cortex, the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the left cerebellum, and increased ReHo of spontaneous brain activity was found in the bilateral conjunction area of the postcentral and precentral gyri, the left paracentral lobule, the left superior temporal gyrus, the left fusiform gyrus, the conjunction area of the right insula, putamen and the right middle occipital gyrus. The observed decreases in ReHo may reflect decreased visuo-motor processing ability, and the increases in ReHo in the somatosensory cortices, the motor areas and the auditory area may indicate compensatory plasticity in amblyopia.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology, Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. linxiaom@mail.sysu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Xiaoming
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xiaohe
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.forename: Shaojie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Tianzi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000550:Amblyopia / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult