J-difference GABA-edited MRS reveals altered cerebello-thalamo-cortical metabolism in patients with hepatic encephalopathy.

Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a common neurological manifestation of liver cirrhosis and is characterized by an increase of ammonia in the brain accompanied by a disrupted neurotransmitter balance, including the GABAergic and glutamatergic systems. The aim of this study is to investigate metabolic abnormalities in the cerebello-thalamo-cortical system of HE patients using GABA-edited MRS and links between metabolite levels, disease severity, critical flicker frequency (CFF), motor performance scores, and blood ammonia levels. GABA-edited MRS was performed in 35 participants (16 controls, 19 HE patients) on a clinical 3 T MRI system. MRS voxels were placed in the right cerebellum, left thalamus, and left motor cortex. Levels of GABA+ and of other metabolites of interest (glutamine, glutamate, myo-inositol, glutathione, total choline, total NAA, and total creatine) were assessed. Group differences in metabolite levels and associations with clinical metrics were tested. GABA+ levels were significantly increased in the cerebellum of patients with HE. GABA+ levels in the motor cortex were significantly decreased in HE patients, and correlated with the CFF (r = 0.73; p < .05) and motor performance scores (r = -0.65; p < .05). Well-established HE-typical metabolite patterns (increased glutamine, decreased myo-inositol and total choline) were confirmed in all three regions and were closely linked to clinical metrics. In summary, our findings provide further evidence for alterations in the GABAergic system in the cerebellum and motor cortex in HE. These changes were accompanied by characteristic patterns of osmolytes and oxidative stress markers in the cerebello-thalamo-cortical system. These metabolic disturbances are a likely contributor to HE motor symptoms in HE. In patients with hepatic encephalopathy, GABA+ levels in the cerebello-thalamo-cortical loop are significantly increased in the cerebellum and significantly decreased in the motor cortex. GABA+ levels in the motor cortex strongly correlate with critical flicker frequency (CFF) and motor performance score (pegboard test tPEG), but not blood ammonia levels (NH3).

Altered motor cortical plasticity in patients with hepatic encephalopathy: A paired associative stimulation study.

OBJECTIVE: Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a potentially reversible brain dysfunction caused by liver failure. Altered synaptic plasticity is supposed to play a major role in the pathophysiology of HE. Here, we used paired associative stimulation with an inter-stimulus interval of 25 ms (PAS25), a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) protocol, to test synaptic plasticity of the motor cortex in patients with manifest HE. METHODS: 23 HE-patients and 23 healthy controls were enrolled in the study. Motor evoked potential (MEP) amplitudes were assessed as measure for cortical excitability. Time courses of MEP amplitude changes after the PAS25 intervention were compared between both groups. RESULTS: MEP-amplitudes increased after PAS25 in the control group, indicating PAS25-induced synaptic plasticity in healthy controls, as expected. In contrast, MEP-amplitudes within the HE group did not change and were lower than in the control group, indicating no induction of plasticity. CONCLUSIONS: Our study revealed reduced synaptic plasticity of the primary motor cortex in HE. SIGNIFICANCE: Reduced synaptic plasticity in HE provides a link between pathological changes on the molecular level and early clinical symptoms of the disease. This decrease may be caused by disturbances in the glutamatergic neurotransmission due to the known hyperammonemia in HE patients.

Cerebellar inhibition in hepatic encephalopathy.

OBJECTIVE: Previous animal work reported that hyperammonemia leads to opposing changes of GABAergic neurotransmission in terms of increase in the cerebellum and decrease in the cerebral cortex. In this study, we investigate GABAergic tone in the cerebellum in patients with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) at different stages of the disease and its relation to critical flicker frequency (CFF) and ataxia. METHODS: Cerebellar inhibition using transcranial magnetic stimulation was investigated in 15 patients with different stages of HE and 15 healthy controls. All patients were assessed using CFF and the score for assessment and rating of ataxia (SARA). RESULTS: Decreased cerebellar inhibition (CBI) was observed in manifest HE at interstimulus interval from 5 to 7 ms. However, the degree of CBI at 7 ms correlated significantly with disease severity measured with SARA and with CFF by trend. CONCLUSION: Reduced CBI in HE patients indicates affection of the cerebellar efferent pathway. The disease severity dependent increase of CBI magnitude supports the notion of disease stage dependent increase of GABAergic neurotransmission in Purkinje cells. SIGNIFICANCE: The results support previous animal experiments showing increase of GABA-ergic neurotransmission in the cerebellum and decrease in the motor cortex in HE.

GABA-ergic tone hypothesis in hepatic encephalopathy - Revisited.

OBJECTIVE: The GABA hypothesis of hepatic encephalopathy (HE) proposes an increased cerebral GABA-ergic tone in HE but has not been investigated in vivo in HE-patients yet. Cortical GABA-ergic and glutamatergic neurotransmission in HE-patients were evaluated using transcranial magnetic stimulation. METHODS: Twenty-one patients with HE grade 1 and 2 and age matched controls participated in the study. GABA-ergic (short- and long-interval intracortical inhibition (SICI and LICI)) and glutamatergic (intracortical and short-interval intracortical facilitation (ICF and SICF)) excitability of the primary motor cortex (M1) and global corticospinal excitability (motor threshold, motor evoked potential recruitment curve (MEP-RC) were compared between the groups. SICI and ICF were correlated to the critical flicker frequency (CFF) as measure for disease severity. RESULTS: In HE-patients, the slope of MEP-RC was significantly shallower compared to healthy controls. SICI was significantly reduced in patients with HE grade 2 compared to healthy controls. In HE-patients, SICI and ICF was significantly correlated to CFF. CONCLUSION: Although global corticospinal excitability was reduced in HE-patients, GABA-ergic inhibition was reduced in M1 depending on HE severity. Moreover CFF related alteration of GABAergic and glutamatergic neurotransmission in patients with HE could support the notion of a severity dependent alteration of cortical excitability. SIGNIFICANCE: The decrease of cortical GABA-ergic tone challenges the classical GABA hypothesis in HE.

Chemical exchange saturation transfer imaging in hepatic encephalopathy.

Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a common complication in liver cirrhosis and associated with an invasion of ammonia into the brain through the blood-brain barrier. Resulting higher ammonia concentrations in the brain are suggested to lead to a dose-dependent gradual increase of HE severity and an associated impairment of brain function. Amide proton transfer-weighted (APTw) chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) imaging has been found to be sensitive to ammonia concentration. The aim of this work was to study APTw CEST imaging in patients with HE and to investigate the relationship between disease severity, critical flicker frequency (CFF), psychometric test scores, blood ammonia, and APTw signals in different brain regions. Whole-brain APTw CEST images were acquired in 34 participants (14 controls, 20 patients (10 minimal HE, 10 manifest HE)) on a 3 T clinical MRI system accompanied by T1 mapping and structural images. T1 normalized magnetization transfer ratio asymmetry analysis was performed around 3 ppm after B0 and B1 correction to create APTw images. All APTw images were spatially normalized into a cohort space to allow direct comparison. APTw images in 6 brain regions (cerebellum, occipital cortex, putamen, thalamus, caudate, white matter) were tested for group differences as well as the link to CFF, psychometric test scores, and blood ammonia. A decrease in APTw intensities was found in the cerebellum and the occipital cortex of manifest HE patients. In addition, APTw intensities in the cerebellum correlated positively with several psychometric scores, such as the fine motor performance scores MLS1 for hand steadiness / tremor (r = 0.466; p = .044) and WRT2 for motor reaction time (r = 0.523; p = .022). Moreover, a negative correlation between APTw intensities and blood ammonia was found for the cerebellum (r = -0.615; p = .007) and the occipital cortex (r = -0.478; p = .045). An increase of APTw intensities was observed in the putamen of patients with minimal HE and correlated negatively with the CFF (r = -0.423; p = .013). Our findings demonstrate that HE is associated with regional differential alterations in APTw signals. These variations are most likely a consequence of hyperammonemia or hepatocerebral degeneration processes, and develop in parallel with disease severity.

Impaired Tactile Temporal Discrimination in Patients With Hepatic Encephalopathy.

The sensory system constantly receives stimuli from the external world. To discriminate two stimuli correctly as two temporally distinct events, the temporal distance or stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the two stimuli has to exceed a specific threshold. If the SOA between two stimuli is shorter than this specific threshold, the two stimuli will be perceptually fused and perceived as one single stimulus. Patients with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) are known to show manifold perceptual impairments, including slowed visual temporal discrimination abilities as measured by the critical flicker frequency (CFF). Here, we hypothesized that HE patients are also impaired in their tactile temporal discrimination abilities and, thus, require a longer SOA between two tactile stimuli to perceive the stimuli as two temporally distinct events. To test this hypothesis, patients with varying grades of HE and age-matched healthy individuals performed a tactile temporal discrimination task. All participants received two tactile stimuli with varying SOA applied to their left index finger and reported how many distinct stimuli they perceived ("1" vs. "2"). HE patients needed a significantly longer SOA (138.0 ± 11.3 ms) between two tactile stimuli to perceive the stimuli as two temporally distinct events than healthy controls (78.6 ± 13.1 ms; p < 0.01). In addition, we found that the temporal discrimination ability in the tactile modality correlated positively with the temporal discrimination ability in the visual domain across all participants (i.e., negative correlation between tactile SOA and visual CFF: r = -0.37, p = 0.033). Our findings provide evidence that temporal tactile perception is substantially impaired in HE patients. In addition, the results suggest that tactile and visual discrimination abilities are affected in HE in parallel. This finding might argue for a common underlying pathophysiological mechanism. We argue that the known global slowing of neuronal oscillations in HE might represent such a common mechanism.

Connecting occipital alpha band peak frequency, visual temporal resolution, and occipital GABA levels in healthy participants and hepatic encephalopathy patients.

Recent studies have proposed a connection between the individual alpha band peak frequency and the temporal resolution of visual perception in healthy human participants. This connection rests on animal studies describing oscillations in the alpha band as a mode of phasic thalamocortical information transfer for low-level visual stimuli, which critically relies on GABAergic interneurons. Here, we investigated the interplay of these parameters by measuring occipital alpha band peak frequency by means of magnetoencephalography, visual temporal resolution by means of behavioral testing, and occipital GABA levels by means of magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Importantly, we investigated a sample of healthy participants and patients with varying grades of hepatic encephalopathy, which are known to exhibit decreases in the investigated parameters, thus providing an increased parameter space. We found that occipital alpha band peak frequency and visual temporal resolution were positively correlated, i.e., higher occipital alpha band peak frequencies were on average related to a higher temporal resolution. Likewise, occipital alpha band peak frequency correlated positively with occipital GABA levels. However, correlations were significant only when both healthy participants and patients were included in the analysis, thereby indicating a connection of the measures on group level (instead of the individual level). These findings provide new insights into neurophysiological and neurochemical underpinnings of visual perception.