title: Altered baseline brain activity in experts measured by amplitude of low frequency fluctuations (ALFF): a resting state fMRI study using expertise model of acupuncturists.
abstract: It is well established that expertise modulates evoked brain activity in response to specific stimuli. Recently, researchers have begun to investigate how expertise influences the resting brain. Among these studies, most focused on the connectivity features within/across regions, i.e., connectivity patterns/strength. However, little concern has been given to a more fundamental issue whether or not expertise modulates baseline brain activity. We investigated this question using amplitude of low-frequency (<0.08 Hz) fluctuation (ALFF) as the metric of brain activity and a novel expertise model, i.e., acupuncturists, due to their robust proficiency in tactile perception and emotion regulation. After the psychophysical and behavioral expertise screening procedure, 23 acupuncturists and 23 matched non-acupuncturists (NA) were enrolled. Our results explicated higher ALFF for acupuncturists in the left ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the contralateral hand representation of the primary somatosensory area (SI) (corrected for multiple comparisons). Additionally, ALFF of VMPFC was negatively correlated with the outcomes of the emotion regulation task (corrected for multiple comparisons). We suggest that our study may reveal a novel connection between the neuroplasticity mechanism and resting state activity, which would upgrade our understanding of the central mechanism of learning. Furthermore, by showing that expertise can affect the baseline brain activity as indicated by ALFF, our findings may have profound implication for functional neuroimaging studies especially those involving expert models, in that difference in baseline brain activity may either smear the spatial pattern of activations for task data or introduce biased results into connectivity-based analysis for resting data.
authors: Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuro Imaging of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China ; School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China.
authors: Minghao
authors: M
authors: Dong
authors: Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuro Imaging of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China.
authors: Jun
authors: J
authors: Li
authors: School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China.
authors: Xinfa
authors: X
authors: Shi
authors: Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuro Imaging of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China.
authors: Shudan
authors: S
authors: Gao
authors: School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China.
authors: Shijun
authors: S
authors: Fu
authors: School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China.
authors: Zongquan
authors: Z
authors: Liu
authors: The 3rd Teaching Hospital, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Chengdu, SC, China.
authors: Fanrong
authors: F
authors: Liang
authors: Department of Radiology, Huaxi MR Research Center, West China Hospital of Sichuan University Chengdu, China.
authors: Qiyong
authors: Q
authors: Gong
authors: School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China.
authors: Guangming
authors: G
authors: Shi
authors: Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuro Imaging of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China ; School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian University Xi'an, SAA, China ; Intelligent Medical Research Center, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China.
authors: Jie
authors: J
authors: Tian
keywords: acupuncturist; amplitude of low frequency fluctuation; baseline brain activity; expertise; functional plasticity; resting state functional MRI