We aimed to explore the brain functional connectivity mechanism of attention cognitive impairment in children with nocturnal enuresis (NE). Children with NE often show attention cognitive deficit, but its brain mechanism remains unclear. Most previous studies have only focused on a single brain region, without involving the association among brain regions. In this study, 26 NE and 26 normal children were selected. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and integrated visual and auditory continuous performance test (IVA-CPT) were performed. The 12 key brain regions of the dorsal attention network (DAN), default mode network (DMN) and ventral attention network (VAN) were selected as areas of interest, and 66 groups of functional connectivity (FC) were analysed among these 12 brain regions. The correlation between FC and IVA-CPT in the two groups was analysed. The FC values showed that the groups with significant differences between NE and normal children were lFEF-aMPFC, rFEF-lIFG, rFEF-rIPS and lAG-VFC (P < 0.05), and the FC value of lAG-VFC was positively correlated with the Full-Scale Attention Quotient (FAQ). Our results showed that attention deficit in children with NE was associated with all three networks and was relative to the FC among the three attention networks. DAN was the brain network most related to attention cognition in children with NE, and most of the brain regions with abnormal connectivity in NE were related to the prefrontal lobe. The lAG was also an important brain region in attention impairment in NE.
Keywords: attention; functional connectivity; nocturnal enuresis.
© 2022 International Society for Developmental Neuroscience.