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Associations of brain entropy (BEN) to cerebral blood flow and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations in the resting brain

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Abstract

Entropy is a fundamental trait of human brain. Using fMRI-based brain entropy (BEN) mapping, interesting findings have been increasingly revealed in normal brain and neuropsychiatric disorders. As BEN is still relatively new, an often-raised question is how much new information can this measure tell about the brain compared to other more established brain activity measures. The study aimed to address that question by examining the relationship between BEN and cerebral blood flow (CBF) and the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF), two widely used resting state brain state measures. fMRI data acquired from a large cohort of normal subjects were used to calculate the three metrics; inter-modality associations were assessed at each voxel through the Pearson correlation analysis. A moderate to high positive BEN-CBF and BEN-fALFF correlations were found in orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) and posterior inferior temporal cortex (ITC); Strong negative BEN-fALFF correlations were found in visual cortex (VC), anterior ITC, striatum, motor network, precuneus, and lateral parietal cortex. Positive CBF-fALFF correlations were found in medial OFC (MOFC), medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), left angular gyrus, and left precuneus. Significant gender effects were observed for all three metrics and their correlations. Our data clearly demonstrated that BEN provides unique information that cannot be revealed by CBF and fALFF.

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Funding

This study was funded by Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant LZ15H180001), the Youth 1000 Talent Program of China, and Hangzhou Qianjiang Endowed Professor Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61671198).

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Correspondence to Ze Wang.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Song, D., Chang, D., Zhang, J. et al. Associations of brain entropy (BEN) to cerebral blood flow and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations in the resting brain. Brain Imaging and Behavior 13, 1486–1495 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-018-9963-4

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