More than just statics: Abnormal dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation in adolescent patients with pure conduct disorder

Abstract

Background: The human brain activity is inherently dynamic over time. Conventional neuroimaging studies have reported abnormalities of static intrinsic brain activity or connectivity in adolescent patients with conduct disorder (CD). Little is known, however, regarding the temporal dynamics alterations of brain activity in CD.

Methods: In this study, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging examinations were performed on adolescent patients with pure CD and age-matched typically developing (TD) controls. The dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (dALFF) was first measured using a sliding-window method. The temporal variability (TV) was then quantified as the variance of dALFF over time and compared between the two groups. Further, the relationships between aberrant TV of dALFF and clinical features were evaluated.

Results: CD patients showed reduced brain dynamics (less temporal variability) in the default-mode network, frontal-limbic cortices, sensorimotor areas, and visual regions which are involved in cognitive, emotional and perceptional processes. Importantly, receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed that regions with altered TV of dALFF exhibited a better ability to distinguish CD patients than the results from static ALFF in the current data set.

Conclusions: Our findings extended previous work by providing a novel perspective on the neural mechanisms underlying adolescent patients with CD and demonstrated that the altered dynamic local brain activity may be a potential biomarker for CD diagnosis.

Keywords: Biomarker; Conduct disorder; Dynamic amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation; Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging; Sliding-window.