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Abnormal brain white matter network in young smokers: a graph theory analysis study

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Abstract

Previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies had investigated the white matter (WM) integrity abnormalities in some specific fiber bundles in smokers. However, little is known about the changes in topological organization of WM structural network in young smokers. In current study, we acquired DTI datasets from 58 male young smokers and 51 matched nonsmokers and constructed the WM networks by the deterministic fiber tracking approach. Graph theoretical analysis was used to compare the topological parameters of WM network (global and nodal) and the inter-regional fractional anisotropy (FA) weighted WM connections between groups. The results demonstrated that both young smokers and nonsmokers had small-world topology in WM network. Further analysis revealed that the young smokers exhibited the abnormal topological organization, i.e., increased network strength, global efficiency, and decreased shortest path length. In addition, the increased nodal efficiency predominately was located in frontal cortex, striatum and anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG) in smokers. Moreover, based on network-based statistic (NBS) approach, the significant increased FA-weighted WM connections were mainly found in the PFC, ACG and supplementary motor area (SMA) regions. Meanwhile, the network parameters were correlated with the nicotine dependence severity (FTND) scores, and the nodal efficiency of orbitofrontal cortex was positive correlation with the cigarette per day (CPD) in young smokers. We revealed the abnormal topological organization of WM network in young smokers, which may improve our understanding of the neural mechanism of young smokers form WM topological organization level.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is supported by the Project for the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant nos. 81571751, 81571753, 61502376, 81401478, 81401488, 81470816, 61431013, 81471737, 81301281, 81271644, 81271546, 81271549, the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China under Grant no. 2014JQ4118, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under the Grant nos. JBG151207, JB161201 JB151204, JB121405, the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia under Grant no. 2014BS0610, the Innovation Fund Project of Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology Nos. 2015QNGG03, 2014QDL002, General Financial Grant the China Post- doctoral Science Foundation under Grant no.2014 M552416.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an Shaanxi, 710071, People’s Republic of China

    Yajuan Zhang, Min Li, Ruonan Wang, Yanzhi Bi, Zhang Yi, Jixin Liu & Kai Yuan

  2. Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuro Imaging, Ministry of Education, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China

    Yajuan Zhang, Min Li, Ruonan Wang, Yanzhi Bi, Zhang Yi, Jixin Liu & Kai Yuan

  3. Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Image Processing, Information Processing Laboratory, School of Information Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, 014010, People’s Republic of China

    Dahua Yu & Kai Yuan

  4. Guangxi Key Laboratory of the Multi-source Information Mining and Security, Guangxi Normal University, Gulin, 541004, People’s Republic of China

    Yangding Li

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  1. Yajuan Zhang
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  2. Min Li
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  3. Ruonan Wang
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Correspondence to Dahua Yu or Kai Yuan.

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Zhang, Y., Li, M., Wang, R. et al. Abnormal brain white matter network in young smokers: a graph theory analysis study. Brain Imaging and Behavior 12, 345–356 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-017-9699-6

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