Dynamic frontostriatal functional peak connectivity (in alcohol use disorder)

Figures

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  FIGURE 1. Frontostriatal connectivity gradient and dynamic PeaCoG time course. (a) Locations of striatal voxels projected on the empirically estimated striatal gradient. (b) Striatal peak connectivity locations on the gradient of frontal voxels (PeaCoG maps) averaged over the whole sample. A medial‐ventral‐rostral to lateral‐dorsal‐caudal organizational pattern of frontostriatal connectivity is clearly visible. Please note that the scale of the colors in display B is more restricted than in display A, which presumably is due to a regression to the mean effect related to the averaging. (c) Dynamic striatal peak connectivity of a voxel in the left dlPFC (Figure 3) during the resting state session in a single patient with AUD that was not specifically selected (first participant of the sample). The y‐axis and the colors correspond to striatal locations in Figure 1a. We conducted dynamic PeaCoG analyses based on sliding window dynamic functional connectivity with window sizes of 15, 20, 30, and 45 volumes, the example time course is shown for a window size of 20 volumes

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  FIGURE 2. rOFC cluster dynamic PeaCoG spatial distribution. (a) Number of time points the right OFC cluster (small inlay) dynamic peak connectivity fell into spatial bins in the striatum during the resting state session averaged over groups. The results demonstrate a ventral shift of dynamic rOFC‐striatal connectivity in the AUD group. The x‐axis corresponds to striatal locations in Figure 1a. Small asterisks mark bins where the number of time points was significantly different between the groups (p < .05 Bonferroni corrected for the number of bins [20]). Shaded areas represent the SEM. (b) Area in the striatum (blue) corresponding to the bin of the gradient where more connectivity in the AUD group was consistently detected over the different window sizes

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  FIGURE 3. Group comparison of dynamic PeaCoG SD. Cluster in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) with higher dynamic PeaCoG variability (SD) in healthy controls in comparison to participants with AUD (cluster‐level p < .025 corr., CDT = 0.001 unc.). The cluster was detected with three of four window sizes. Brighter colors indicate higher overlap (max 3)

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  FIGURE 4. Association of dynamic PeaCoG SD in the left dlPFC cluster with clinical variables. (a) Positive association of left dlPFC dynamic PeaCoG SD with self‐efficacy to abstain from alcohol assessed with the Alcohol Abstinence Self‐Efficacy Scale (rho = 0.3384, p = .01). The association was nominally significant with all four window sizes. (b) Positive association of left dlPFC PeaCoG SD with days of abstinence before scanning (rho = 0.2775, p = .0442). The association was nominally significant with three of four window sizes. Scatter plots for the 20 volume window size are shown