AUTHOR=Pan Pan , Wei Shubao , Ou Yangpan , Liu Feng , Li Huabing , Jiang Wenyan , Li Wenmei , Lei Yiwu , Guo Wenbin , Luo Shuguang 

TITLE=Reduced Global-Brain Functional Connectivity of the Cerebello-Thalamo-Cortical Network in Patients With Dry Eye Disease

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.572693

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2020.572693

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> The pathophysiology of patients with dry eye disease (DED) is associated with abnormal functional connectivity (FC). The present study aims to probe alterations of voxel-wise brain-wide FC in patient with DED at rest in an unbiased way.</p><p><bold>Method:</bold> A total of 20 patients with DED and 23 controls matched by age, sex, and years of education underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. Global-brain FC (GFC) was adopted to analyze the images. Support vector machine (SVM) was utilized to differentiate the patients from the controls.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> Compared with the controls, patients with DED exhibited decreased GFC in the right cerebellum lobule VIII/inferior semi-lunar lobule and left thalamus that belonged to the cerebello-thalamo-cortical network. The GFC values in the left thalamus were positively correlated to the illness duration (<italic>r</italic> = 0.589, <italic>p</italic> = 0.006) in the patients. Decreased GFC values in the left thalamus could be used to discriminate the patients from the controls with optimal accuracy, sensitivity and specificity (88.37, 85.00, and 91.30%).</p><p><bold>Conclusions:</bold> Our findings indicate that decreased GFC in the brain regions associated with cerebello-thalamo-cortical network may provide a new insight for understanding the pathological changes of FC in DED. GFC values in the left thalamus may be utilized as a potential biomarker to identify the patients from the controls.</p>