Dataset Information

Multisystemic Increment of Cortical Thickness in Congenital Blind Children.

ABSTRACT: It has been shown that the total or partial lack of visual experience is associated with a plastic reorganization at the brain level, more prominent in congenital blind. Cortical thickness (CT) studies, to date involving only adult subjects, showed that only congenital blind have a thicker cortex than age-matched sighted population while late blind do not. This was explained as a deviation from the physiological mechanism of initial neural growth followed by a pruning mechanism that, in congenital blind children, might be reduced by their visual deprivation, thus determining a thicker cortex. Since those studies involved only adults, it is unknown when these changes may appear and whether they are related to impairment degree. To address this question, we compared the CT among 28 children, from 2 to 12 years, with congenital visual impairments of different degree and an age-matched sighted population. Vertex-wise analysis showed that blind children, but not low vision one, had a thicker cortical surface in few clusters located in occipital, superior parietal, anterior-cingular, orbito-frontal, and mesial precentral regions. Our data suggest that the effect of visual impairment on determining thicker cortex is an early phenomenon, is multisystemic, and occurs only when blindness is almost complete.

SUBMITTER: Inuggi A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8152892 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Multisystemic Increment of Cortical Thickness in Congenital Blind Children.

Inuggi Alberto A Pichiecchio Anna A Ciacchini Benedetta B Signorini Sabrina S Morelli Federica F Gori Monica M

Cerebral cortex communications 20201009 1

It has been shown that the total or partial lack of visual experience is associated with a plastic reorganization at the brain level, more prominent in congenital blind. Cortical thickness (CT) studies, to date involving only adult subjects, showed that only congenital blind have a thicker cortex than age-matched sighted population while late blind do not. This was explained as a deviation from the physiological mechanism of initial neural growth followed by a pruning mechanism that, in congenit ...[more]

PMID: 34296131

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Project description:ImportanceA total of 25.7 million children in the United States are classified as overweight or obese. Obesity is associated with deficits in executive function, which may contribute to poor dietary decision-making. Less is known about the associations between being overweight or obese and brain development.ObjectiveTo examine whether body mass index (BMI) is associated with thickness of the cerebral cortex and whether cortical thickness mediates the association between BMI and executive function in children.Design, setting, and participantsIn this cross-sectional study, cortical thickness maps were derived from T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance images of a large, diverse sample of 9 and 10-year-old children from 21 US sites. List sorting, flanker, matrix reasoning, and Wisconsin card sorting tasks were used to assess executive function.Main outcomes and measuresA 10-fold nested cross-validation general linear model was used to assess mean cortical thickness from BMI across cortical brain regions. Associations between BMI and executive function were explored with Pearson partial correlations. Mediation analysis examined whether mean prefrontal cortex thickness mediated the association between BMI and executive function.ResultsAmong 3190 individuals (mean [SD] age, 10.0 [0.61] years; 1627 [51.0%] male), those with higher BMI exhibited lower cortical thickness. Eighteen cortical regions were significantly inversely associated with BMI. The greatest correlations were observed in the prefrontal cortex. The BMI was inversely correlated with dimensional card sorting (r = -0.088, P < .001), list sorting (r = -0.061, P < .003), and matrix reasoning (r = -0.095, P < .001) but not the flanker task. Mean prefrontal cortex thickness mediated the association between BMI and list sorting (mean [SE] indirect effect, 0.014 [0.008]; 95% CI, 0.001-0.031) but not the matrix reasoning or card sorting task.Conclusions and relevanceThese results suggest that BMI is associated with prefrontal cortex development and diminished executive functions, such as working memory.

Dataset Information

Multisystemic Increment of Cortical Thickness in Congenital Blind Children.

Publications

Multisystemic Increment of Cortical Thickness in Congenital Blind Children.

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