What question did this study set out to answer?

This research aims to examine the variations in brain activity indicators in patients with middle cerebral artery stenosis and their relationship with cerebrovascular reactivity.

April 3, 2026Open Access

The Cerebrovascular Reactivity Adjusted Fractional Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations Abnormalities in Middle Cerebral Artery Stenosis and Occlusive Disease

Key Points

This research aims to examine the variations in brain activity indicators in patients with middle cerebral artery stenosis and their relationship with cerebrovascular reactivity.
Utilized resting-state functional MRI to measure sfALFF and dfALFF in 41 MCA-S patients and 50 controls.
Compared differences in sfALFF and dfALFF between groups, both with and without CVR correction.
Conducted partial correlation analysis to assess links between brain activity and neuropsychological assessment results.
MCA-S patients showed increased sfALFF and dfALFF in specific brain regions after CVR correction.
No significant correlations were found between fALFF metrics and neuropsychological scores after adjustment.
Group differences were noted in several brain areas with altered sfALFF and dfALFF metrics post-CVR correction, demonstrating abnormal neuronal activity.

Abstract

This study investigated the variation characteristics of static fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (sfALFF) and dynamic fALFF (dfALFF) in Middle cerebral artery stenosis or occlusion (MCA-S) patients, and explored these two indicators alterations with cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) correction. A total of 41 MCA-S patients and 50 matched controls underwent resting-state functional MRI and neuropsychological testing. Group differences in sfALFF/dfALFF were compared between the two groups, and the brain regions with differences in sfALFF/dfALFF with and without CVR correction were explored. Subsequently, partial correlation analysis was employed to evaluate the correlation between the abnormal brain regions and neuropsychological assessments. After CVR correction, MCA-S patients displayed increased sfALFF in Vermis₆, ipsilesional Cerebelum₈, Hippocampus, and other regions, alongside elevated dfALFF in Vermis₇, ipsilesional Hippocampus, and contralesional Cerebelum₈ (P < 0. 001). No significant correlations were found between fALFF metrics and neuropsychological scores post-Bonferroni correction. Uncorrected analyses showed group differences in sfALFF/CVR within ipsilesional OccipitalMid and ParietalInf, while CVR-adjusted results revealed changes in ipsilesional Cerebelum₈ and contralesional Caudate (P < 0. 05). For dfALFF, uncorrected differences emerged in ipsilesional Postcentral, whereas CVR correction highlighted ipsilesional TemporalInf alterations. In summary, MCA-S patients exhibited abnormal neuronal activity associated with both sfALFF and dfALFF. With CVR correction, vascular confounding effects on the BOLD signal were partially mitigated, thereby enabling more accurate reflection of underlying neural activity alterations.

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Cite This Study

Zhang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69cf5f425a333a821460e3ef https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s12975-026-01430-z

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