Abnormal baseline brain activity in low-grade hepatic encephalopathy

ZHOU Ping

Abstract：Objective To estimate abnormal baseline brain activity in low-grade hepatic encephalopathy .Methods We conducted a resting-state fMRI in 19 healthy controls ,18 cirrhotic patients without HE ,and 22 cirrhotic patients with low-grade HE .The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) of fMRI signal was computed to measure the sponta-neous neuronal activity .Results Several regions showing significant ALFF differences among three groups were the pre-cuneus ,occipital lobe ,left frontal lobe and anterior/middle cingulate cortex ,and left cerebellum posterior lobe .Compared to controls or patients without HE ,patients with low-grade HE showed decreased ALFF in the precuneus and adjacent cu-neus ,visual cortex ,and left cerebellum posterior lobe .Compared to controls ,patients with low-grade HE showed higher ALFF in both cortical and subcortical regions ,including the right middle cingulate gyrus ,and left anterior/middle cingu-late gyrus ,inferior frontal gyrus ,insula lobe ,parahippocampal gyrus ,middle temporal gyrus and lentiform nucleus ;com-pared to patients without HE ,patients with low-grade HE showed higher ALFF in the left medial frontal gyrus and anteri-or cingulate gyrus ,bilateral superior frontal gyrus ,and right middle frontal gyrus .Conclusion These results suggested the existence of aberrant brain activity at the baseline state in low-grade HE ,which may be implicated in the neurological pathophysiology underlying HE .