Some previous reports have suggested that hypertension is a risk factor for dementia and cognitive impairments. Using behavioral data from 1007 elderly human subjects (405 hypertensive patients) of Han ethnicity from Beijing, China, the present study aimed to assess the effects of hypertension on cognitive performance and explore related neuronal changes via advanced resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging data from 84 of these subjects (44 hypertensive patients). Cognitively, we found that patients with hypertension showed decreased executive functions and attention compared with those with normotension in the large sample. In magnetic resonance imaging scan sample, using independent component analysis to examine the functional connectivity difference between the two groups, we found that the frontoparietal networks in the hypertensive group exhibited altered patterns compared with the control group, mainly in the inferior parietal lobe, left inferior frontal lobe,...

Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is a serious metabolic disorder affecting 16 million people in the US, with prevalence expected to reach more than 54.9 million Americans by 2030. Small vessel disease is prominent in T2D as evidenced by the high incidence of retin...

We compared neural substrates of two-dimensional shape processing in human and nonhuman primates using functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in awake subjects. The comparison of MR activity evoked by viewing intact and scrambled images of objects revealed shape-sensitive regions in occipital, temporal, and parietal cortex of both humans and macaques. Intraparietal cortex in monkeys was relatively more two-dimensional shape sensitive than that of humans. In both species, there was an interaction between scrambling and type of stimuli (grayscale images and drawings), but the effect of stimulus type was much stronger in monkeys than in humans. Shape- and motion-sensitive regions overlapped to some degree. However, this overlap was much more marked in humans than in monkeys. The shape-sensitive regions can be used to constrain the warping of monkey to human cortex and suggest a large expansion of lateral parietal and superior temporal cortex in humans compared with monkeys.

Fueled by the recent and controversial brain-wide association studies in humans, the animal neuroimaging community has also begun questioning whether using larger sample sizes is necessary for ethical and effective scientific progress. In this opinion piece, we illustrate two opposing views on sample size extremes in MRI-based animal neuroimaging.

MR imaging with neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) has provided new opportunities to interrogate the composition of the axonal and extra-axonal compartments of the brain. Previous work from our group has shown the high sensitivit...

Resting-state network dysfunction can serve as a relatively early indicator of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Precise evaluation using non-human experimental animals such as common marmosets is important as longitudinal st...

Regulation of blood flow and oxygen delivery in the brain is essential for survival. In a normal physiological state the cerebral blood flow (CBF) stays very constant due to persistent adjustment of vascular resistance according to blood pressure. Imagi...

Vascular dysfunction is increasingly recognized in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and measures of vascular dysfunction can be evaluated using cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and imaging-based biomarker approaches. A clinical need exists to i...

Introduction Identification of the epileptogenic network is crucial for planning surgical interventions in patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy. The epileptogenic networks are defined by a network of brain regions involved in the production of ep...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a prevalent cause of severe disorders, including post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE). PTE is diagnosed if seizures occur at least one week post-TBI, though they can emerge even in years after a TBI (Diaz-Arrastia et al., 2009)....