Myeloarchitectonic plasticity in elite golf players' brains.

Human neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that exercise influences the cortical structural plasticity as indexed by gray or white matter volume. It remains elusive, however, whether exercise affects cortical changes at the finer-grained myelination structure level. To answer this question, we scanned 28 elite golf players in comparison with control participants, using a novel neuroimaging technique-quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI). The data showed myeloarchitectonic plasticity in the left temporal pole of the golf players: the microstructure of this brain region of the golf players was better proliferated than that of control participants. In addition, this myeloarchitectonic plasticity was positively related to golfing proficiency. Our study has manifested that myeloarchitectonic plasticity could be induced by exercise, and thus, shed light on the potential benefits of exercise on brain health and cognitive enhancement.

Myeloarchitectonic Asymmetries of Language Regions in the Human Brain.

One prominent theory in neuroscience and psychology assumes that cortical regions for language are left hemisphere lateralized in the human brain. In the current study, we used a novel technique, quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (qMRI), to examine interhemispheric asymmetries in language regions in terms of macromolecular tissue volume (MTV) and quantitative longitudinal relaxation time (T1) maps in the living human brain. These two measures are known to reflect cortical myeloarchitecture from the microstructural perspective. One hundred and fifteen adults (55 male, 60 female) were examined for their myeloarchitectonic asymmetries of language regions. We found that the cortical myeloarchitecture of inferior frontal areas including the pars opercularis, pars triangularis, and pars orbitalis is left lateralized, while that of the middle temporal gyrus, Heschl's gyrus, and planum temporale is right lateralized. Moreover, the leftward lateralization of myelination structure is significantly correlated with language skills measured by phonemic and speech tone awareness. This study reveals for the first time a mixed pattern of myeloarchitectonic asymmetries, which calls for a general theory to accommodate the full complexity of principles underlying human hemispheric specialization.

Microstructural plasticity in the bilingual brain.

The human brain has been uniquely equipped with the remarkable ability to acquire more than one language, as in bilingual individuals. Previous neuroimaging studies have indicated that learning a second language (L2) induced neuroplasticity at the macrostructural level. In this study, using the quantitative MRI (qMRI) combined with functional MRI (fMRI) techniques, we quantified the microstructural properties and tested whether second language learning modulates the microstructure in the bilingual brain. We found significant microstructural variations related to age of acquisition of second language in the left inferior frontal region and the left fusiform gyrus that are crucial for resolving lexical competition of bilinguals' two languages. Early second language acquisition contributes to enhance cortical development at the microstructural level.

The Interaction Analysis between the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Systems in CHF by Using Transfer Entropy Method.

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a cardiovascular disease associated with autonomic dysfunction, where sympathovagal imbalance was reported in many studies using heart rate variability (HRV). To learn more about the dynamic interaction in the autonomic nervous system (ANS), we explored the directed interaction between the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) with the help of transfer entropy (TE). This article included 24-h RR interval signals of 54 healthy subjects (31 males and 23 females, 61.38 ± 11.63 years old) and 44 CHF subjects (8 males and 2 females, 19 subjects' gender were unknown, 55.51 ± 11.44 years old, 4 in class I, 8 in class II and 32 in class III~IV, according to the New York Heart Association Function Classification), obtained from the PhysioNet database and then segmented into 5-min non-overlapping epochs using cubic spline interpolation. For each segment in the normal group and CHF group, frequency-domain features included low-frequency (LF) power, high-frequency (HF) power and LF/HF ratio were extracted as classical estimators of autonomic activity. In the nonlinear domain, TE between LF and HF were calculated to quantify the information exchanging between SNS and PNS. Compared with the normal group, an extreme decrease in LF/HF ratio (p = 0.000) and extreme increases in both TE(LF→HF) (p = 0.000) and TE(HF→LF) (p = 0.000) in the CHF group were observed. Moreover, both in normal and CHF groups, TE(LF→HF) was a lot greater than TE(HF→LF) (p = 0.000), revealing that TE was able to distinguish the difference in the amount of directed information transfer among ANS. Extracted features were further applied in discriminating CHF using IBM SPSS Statistics discriminant analysis. The combination of the LF/HF ratio, TE(LF→HF) and TE(HF→LF) reached the highest screening accuracy (83.7%). Our results suggested that TE could serve as a complement to traditional index LF/HF in CHF screening.