Neural Changes in Adolescents with Single Ventricle Congenital Heart Disease

Single ventricle heart disease (SVHD) adolescents show brain tissue injury in sites that mediate autonomic, mood, and cognition functions deficient in the condition, which may result from impaired neural interactions at resting state. However, it is unclear whether SVHD subjects have aberrant neural activities in those areas that can be examined with regional homogeneity (ReHo) measures, assessing local neural synchronization. We aimed to examine regional brain neural activity changes in SVHD compared to healthy controls using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Resting fMRI data were collected from 27 SVHD and 31 controls using a 3.0-Tesla MRI scanner. Using the standard pre-processing steps, ReHo maps were calculated and transformed to z-scored maps, normalized to a common space, smoothed, and compared between groups (ANCOVA; qFDR corrected p ≤ 0.05; covariates: age and sex). Reduced ReHo appeared in brain sites, including the caudate, parietal cortex, frontal cortex, and amygdala, and increased ReHo emerged in the parietal cortex, insula, cerebellar vermis, hippocampus, para-hippocampal gyrus, cerebellar peduncles, and cerebellar cortex in SVHD over controls. SVHD adolescents show impaired neural synchronization at resting in areas involved in neurobehavior and cognition. The findings indicate the widespread impact on brain functional organization and may explain functional deficits observed in SVHD.