Impairments in the Default Mode and Executive Networks in Methamphetamine Users During Short-Term Abstinence

Mingqiang Gong; Yunxia Shen; Wenbin Liang; Zhen Zhang; Chunxue He; Mingwu Lou; ZiYu Xu

doi:10.2147/IJGM.S369571

Impairments in the Default Mode and Executive Networks in Methamphetamine Users During Short-Term Abstinence

Int J Gen Med. 2022 Jul 6:15:6073-6084. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S369571. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Mingqiang Gong^#^{1

2}, Yunxia Shen^#², Wenbin Liang², Zhen Zhang³, Chunxue He⁴, Mingwu Lou², ZiYu Xu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, The Fourth Clinical Medical College of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Radiology, Longgang Central Hospital, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Radiology, The Third People's Hospital of Longgang District, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Department of Radiology, Shenzhen Clinical Medicine College, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: Methamphetamine use may cause severe neurotoxicity and cognitive impairment, leading to addiction, overdose, and high rates of relapse. However, few studies have systematically focused on functional impairments detected by neuroimaging in methamphetamine abstainers (MAs) during short-term abstinence. This study aimed to investigate effective connectivity, resting-state networks, and internetwork functional connectivity in MA brains to improve clinical treatment.

Methods: Twenty MAs and 27 age- and education-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and Granger causality were analyzed to investigate disrupted brain regions and effective connectivity, respectively. Independent component analysis and functional network connectivity were used to identify resting-state networks and internetwork functional connectivity, respectively.

Results: Compared with healthy controls, MAs demonstrated abnormal amplitudes of low-frequency fluctuations in the bilateral precuneus, left posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), left superior parietal lobule, left supplementary motor area (SMA), and left inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Moreover, MAs showed decreased effective connectivity from the left PCC to the left precuneus, increased effective connectivity from the left precuneus to the left MFG and from the right precuneus to the left SMA, and altered functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN), frontoparietal network, sensorimotor network, ventral attention network, cerebellar network, and visual network. Importantly, hyperconnectivity between the DMN and ventral attention network and hypoconnectivity between the DMN and cerebellar network as well as the DMN and frontoparietal network were demonstrated in MAs.

Conclusion: Our study implies that in short-term methamphetamine abstinence, disruptions to the DMN and executive network may a play key role, providing new insights for early rehabilitation.

Keywords: Granger causality analysis; abstinence; independent component analysis; methamphetamine; network.