Abnormal Brain Functional Connectivity Strength in the Overactive Bladder Syndrome: A Resting-State fMRI Study

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the whole-brain functional connectivity strength (FCS) of patients with the overactive bladder syndrome (OAB).

Methods: This study investigates the changes of intrinsic whole brain functional connectivity pattern in OAB using FCS. We acquired resting-state fMRI data from 26 OAB patients and 28 healthy controls. FCS was used to compute the long-range and short-range FCS values for each voxel in the brain of each subject. The long or short-range FCS maps were compared between OAB patients and healthy controls. Pearson's correlation coefficients was also performed between abnormal FCS regions and clinical/psychometric scores in patients.

Results: Compared with healthy control subjects, the OAB patients exhibited significantly decreased short-range FCS in the right medial superior frontal gyrus and bilateral anterior cingulate gyrus, and increased short-range FCS in the middle frontal gyrus, the precentral gyrus, and bilateral caudate nucleus. In addition, significantly decreased long-range FCS was found in bilateral middle cingulate gyrus and posterior cingulate gyrus. Furthermore, the abnormal FCS values in the right caudate nucleus showed significantly negative correlation with Self-Rating Depression Scale of OAB patients.

Conclusion: Patients with OAB have abnormal short-range and long-range FCS in brain regions associated with brain-bladder network. Our study provides new insights into the underlying brain network topology of OAB.