Altered Functional Connectivity Strength at Rest in Medication-Free Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Dan Lv, Yangpan Ou, Yuhua Wang, Jidong Ma, Chuang Zhan, Ru Yang, Yunhui Chen, Tinghuizi Shang, Cuicui Jia, Lei Sun, Guangfeng Zhang, Zhenghai Sun, Jinyang Li, Xiaoping Wang, Wenbin Guo, Ping Li, Dan Lv, Yangpan Ou, Yuhua Wang, Jidong Ma, Chuang Zhan, Ru Yang, Yunhui Chen, Tinghuizi Shang, Cuicui Jia, Lei Sun, Guangfeng Zhang, Zhenghai Sun, Jinyang Li, Xiaoping Wang, Wenbin Guo, Ping Li

Abstract

Background: Previous studies explored the whole-brain functional connectome using the degree approach in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, whether the altered degree values can be used to discriminate OCD from healthy controls (HCs) remains unclear.

Methods: A total of 40 medication-free patients with OCD and 38 HCs underwent a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) scan. Data were analyzed with the degree approach and a support vector machine (SVM) classifier.

Results: Patients with OCD showed increased degree values in the left thalamus and left cerebellum Crus I and decreased degree values in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right precuneus, and left postcentral gyrus. SVM classification analysis indicated that the increased degree value in the left thalamus is a marker of OCD, with an acceptable accuracy of 88.46%, sensitivity of 87.50%, and specificity of 89.47%.

Conclusion: Altered degree values within and outside the cortical-striatal-thalamic-cortical (CSTC) circuit may cocontribute to the pathophysiology of OCD. Increased degree values of the left thalamus can be used as a future marker for OCD understanding-classification.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02421315.

Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2021 Dan Lv et al.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Brain regions with abnormal degree values in patients with OCD. t values from two-sample t tests with p < 0.05 (GRF corrected). Red denotes increased degree values; blue denotes decreased degree values. OCD = obsessive-compulsive disorder; GRF = Gaussian random field; L = left; R = right.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Accuracy of SVM using the five brain regions with abnormal degree values to separate OCD from HCs. The SVM result showed that the highest accuracy is 5. 1 = left cerebellum Crus I, 2 = right precuneus, 3 = left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, 4 = left postcentral gyrus, and 5 = left thalamus. SVM = support vector machine; OCD = obsessive-compulsive disorder; HCs = health controls.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Visualization of SVM results for discriminating patients from controls using the degree values of the left thalamus. (a) 3D view of the classified accuracy with the best parameters. (b) Classified map of the degree values of the left thalamus. log2c and log2g mean the range and step size of the given parameters c and g (c and g are the parameters of the kernel functions in SVM training). The figure in (b) means the sensitivity and specificity of the SVM model. The horizontal axis conveys the predicted classification of each subject, and the vertical axis conveys the correct classification of each subject. SVM = support vector machine.

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