Biomedical subjects

Eric C Wong

Publications and source records attributed to Eric C Wong.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

Increased diffusion sensitivity with hyperechos.

It is shown that the introduction of a 180 degrees refocusing pulse into a standard diffusion weighted stimulated echo sequence is equivalent to the simplest hyperecho sequence with identical diffusion weighting but equal or greater signal-to-noise (SNR) and thus equal or greater diffusion contrast. For high b-value imaging, the hyperecho sequence thus possesses the high diffusion contrast in the presence of small T(1)/T(2) ratios characteristic of stimulated echo sequences but with less than the 50% loss in SNR that is associated with the stimulated echo. For low b-value imaging, the hyperecho signal converges to that of the standard spin echo. The advantages of the two-pulse diffusion weighted hyperecho sequence are demonstrated theoretically. Experimental results are shown in the application to high angular resolution diffusion encoding (HARD) in normal human brain.

Anisotropy↗

PubMed2003

Alternative brain organization after prenatal cerebral injury: convergent fMRI and cognitive data.

The current study presents both longitudinal behavioral data and functional activation data documenting the effects of early focal brain injury on the development of spatial analytic processing in two children, one with prenatal left hemisphere (LH) injury and one with right hemisphere (RH) injury. A substantial body of evidence has shown that adults and children with early, lateralized brain injury show evidence of spatial analytic deficits. LH injury compromises the ability to encode the parts of a spatial pattern, while RH injury impairs pattern integration. The two children described in this report show patterns of deficit consistent with the site of their injury. In the current study, their longitudinal behavioral data spanning the age range from preschool to adolescence are presented in conjunction with data from a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of spatial processing. The activation results provide evidence that alternative profiles of neural organization can arise following early focal brain injury, and document where in the brain spatial functions are carried out when regions that normally mediate them are damaged. In addition, the coupling of the activation with the behavioral data allows us to go beyond the simple mapping of functional sites, to ask questions about how those sites may have come to mediate the spatial functions.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

BOLD and perfusion response to finger-thumb apposition after acetazolamide administration: differential relationship to global perfusion.

The authors studied the effects of altering global cerebral blood flow on both blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response and perfusion response to finger-thumb apposition. A PICORE/QUIPSS II protocol was used to collect interleaved BOLD-weighted and perfusion-weighted images on eight finger-thumb apposition trials. Subjects were studied on a drug-free day and on a day when acetazolamide was administered between the second and third trials. After acetazolamide administration, resting cortical perfusion increased an average of 20% from preadministration levels, whereas the BOLD response to finger-thumb apposition decreased by an average of 35% in the S1M1 hand area. Contrary to predictions from the exhausted cerebrovascular reserve hypothesis and the oxygen limitation model, an effect of acetazolamide on cerebral blood flow response in the S1M1 hand area was not observed. Across the acetazolamide trials, BOLD response was inversely correlated with resting cortical perfusion for individual subject data. These results suggest that resting perfusion affects the magnitude of the BOLD response and is thus an important confounding factor in fMRI studies, and that the physiologic systems that increase cerebral blood flow in response to acetazolamide administration and systems that increase cerebral blood flow in response to altered neural activity appear to have additive effects.

Acetazolamide↗

PubMed2002

Encoding activity in the medial temporal lobe examined with anatomically constrained fMRI analysis.

Functional neuroimaging studies have produced a sizable number of observations of increased activity in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) during encoding of novel memories. The studies have suggested possible functional specialization within the anatomical components of the MTL (hippocampus and the entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortical areas). Neuroimaging studies have just begun to link anatomical regions to specific functions. To address functional specialization hypothesis, a method is described for using high-resolution structural information from magnetic resonance imaging MRI to constrain the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, for independent assessment of functional activity change in each component of the MTL. With this method, increased activity was detected throughout the MTL in a group of participants (n = 5) who encoded novel pictures. A separate group (n = 5) who encoded words exhibited lower-levels of evoked activity. Laterality effects were found reflecting increased right hemisphere activity during picture encoding (parahippocampal cortex) and increased left hemisphere activity during word encoding (posterior hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex). Neither condition provided evidence for greater activity in the posterior hippocampus than in the anterior hippocampus during encoding, although the greatest increases in activity were observed in the parahippocampal cortex. The anatomically driven methodology is shown to provide detailed comparison of levels of activity change across specific brain areas and to provide increased sensitivity to functional change in each region of the MTL.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Analysis and design of perfusion-based event-related fMRI experiments.

Perfusion-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using arterial spin labeling (ASL) methods has the potential to provide better localization of the functional signal to the sites of neural activity compared to blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) contrast fMRI. At present, experiments using ASL have been limited to simple block and periodic single-trial designs. We present here an adaptation of the general linear model to perfusion-based fMRI that enables the design and analysis of more complicated designs, such as random and semirandom event-related designs. Formulas for the least-squares estimate of the perfusion response and the F statistic for the detection of a response are derived. Exact expressions and useful approximations for detection power and estimation efficiency are presented, and it is shown that the trade-off between power and efficiency for perfusion experiments is similar to that previously observed for BOLD experiments. The least-squares estimate is compared with an estimate formed from the running subtraction of tag and control images. The running subtraction estimate is shown to be approximately equal to a temporally low-pass-filtered version of the least-squares estimate. Numerical simulations and results from ASL experiments are used to support the theoretical findings.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2002

Functional MRI of global and local processing in children.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine developmental change in hemispheric biases for globally and locally directed analysis of hierarchical forms. In a previous reaction time (RT) study, which presented hierarchical stimuli to the visual hemifields, children 7 to 14 years of age demonstrated an emerging pattern of hemispheric differences. Initially children analyzed local elements more slowly, without a strongly lateralized advantage for local or global level processing. With age, children's development was marked by a left hemisphere advantage for local level processing that resembled an adult's and a trend toward a right hemisphere advantage for global. In the current study, 20 children 12 to 14 years old were imaged during attend-global and attend-local conditions to determine whether the developmental change in cognitive measures corresponded to a change in distribution of functional activation. Children formed two groups based on their RT performance, immature-bilateral (IB) or mature-lateralized (ML). The volume of task-related activation within lateral temporo-occipital regions of interest was compared for global and local conditions between the two groups. The IB children showed greater activation overall for local level processing, comparable activation across the two hemispheres for the global condition, and a trend of right greater than left hemisphere activation for local. In contrast, the ML children displayed right greater than left hemisphere activation during global analysis and the opposite during local processing. Importantly these patterns of functional activation mirror the profiles of RT performance. Together they demonstrate a shift from undifferentiated, bilateral processing toward hemispheric lateralization.

Aging↗

PubMed2002

Comparing the brain areas supporting nondeclarative categorization and recognition memory.

Brain areas associated with both nondeclarative categorization and recognition memory were identified and contrasted using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of healthy volunteers. Activity during dot-pattern categorization and recognition were compared with a control task (counting dots) in two separate groups of participants (n=5 each). The network of areas associated with nondeclarative categorization was found to include bilateral inferior prefrontal and parietal cortical areas that have been implicated in several other studies of categorization. During recognition, increased activity was found in posterior visual areas, the precuneus, posterior cingulate and right prefrontal cortex. Using the common control condition as a reference, recognition and categorization were contrasted and recognition was found to evoke more activity in posterior early visual cortex, the precuneus, right medial temporal lobe and right dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex. Previous research has implicated changes in visual representation in learning a category of dot-pattern by comparing activity evoked by categorical and non-categorical stimuli. The current findings support those results and additionally identify brain areas active during categorization that are involved in expressing this category knowledge.

Brain↗