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. 2013;8(3):e58098.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0058098. Epub 2013 Mar 6.

Altered fronto-striatal and fronto-cerebellar circuits in heroin-dependent individuals: a resting-state FMRI study

Yarong Wang  1 , Jia Zhu, Qiang Li, Wei Li, Ning Wu, Ying Zheng, Haifeng Chang, Jiajie Chen, Wei Wang
Affiliations

Altered fronto-striatal and fronto-cerebellar circuits in heroin-dependent individuals: a resting-state FMRI study

Yarong Wang et al. PLoS One. 2013.

Abstract

Background: The formation of compulsive pattern of drug use is related to abnormal regional neural activity and functional reorganization in the heroin addicts' brain, but the relationship between heroin-use-induced disrupted local neural activity and its functional organization pattern in resting-state is unknown.

Methodology/principal findings: With fMRI data acquired during resting state from 17 male heroin dependent individuals (HD) and 15 matched normal controls (NC), we analyzed the changes of amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) in brain areas, and its relationship with history of heroin use. Then we investigated the addiction related alteration in functional connectivity of the brain regions with changed ALFF using seed-based correlation analysis. Compared with NC, the ALFF of HD was obviously decreased in the right caudate, right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), right superior medial frontal cortex and increased in the bilateral cerebellum, left superior temporal gyrus and left superior occipital gyrus. Of the six regions, only the ALFF value of right caudate had a negative correlation with heroin use. Setting the six regions as "seeds", we found the functional connectivity between the right caudate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) was reduced but that between the right caudate and cerebellum was enhanced. Besides, an abnormal lateral PFC-dACC connection was also observed in HD.

Conclusions: The observations of dysfunction of fronto-striatal and fronto-cerebellar circuit in HD implicate an altered balance between local neuronal assemblies activity and their integrated network organization pattern which may be involved in the process from voluntary to habitual and compulsive drug use.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. ALFF differences between HD and NC groups.
The differences map from the bottom to the top, (every 12 mm), (p<0.01, corrected, T>2.7633 or <−2.7633, cluster size >16). Blue indicates HD individuals had decreased ALFF compared with NC and the red indicates the opposite.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Bivariate scatter plots.
A shows the negative correlation between the duration of the heroin use and the standardized ALFF of the right caudate, and B the negative correlation between the heroin daily dosage and the standardized ALFF of the right caudate.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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Grants and funding

This work was supported by the grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO:30870685, 81071143 and 81071142; http://www.nsfc.gov.cn) and Shaanxi Province Science and Technology Development Projection (NO:2008k12-02, 2009K01-65, 2010k16-03-01 and 2010K16-03-02; http://www.sninfo.gov.cn). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.