The following is a summary of “Altered Dynamic Functional Connectivity of Insular Subdivisions Among Male Cigarette Smokers,” published in the May 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Xie et al.
The brain’s insular subdivisions are connected to specific brain regions, each with unique functions, especially in chronic cigarette smokers.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study investigating the impact of dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) in different insular subdivisions among smokers.
They collected resting-state brain data from 31 smokers with nicotine dependence and 27 age-matched non-smokers. The focus was on three insular regions (dorsal, ventral, posterior); dFC metrics of insular seeds were assessed using a sliding windows method. Support vector machine analysis was applied to classify smokers based on abnormal insular dFC.
The results showed that smokers exhibited lower dFC variance between the left ventral anterior insula and both the right superior parietal cortex and both the right superior parietal cortex along with the left central anterior insula and left inferior parietal cortex regions compared to non-smokers, as well as higher dFC variance in other areas. There were notable changes in dFC between the right dorsal insula and the right middle temporal gyrus. Higher dFC between these subdivisions were associated with longer smoking duration. Abnormal insular dFC patterns accurately classified smokers from non-smokers with an accuracy of 89.66%, a sensitivity of 96.30%, and a specificity of 83.87%.
Investigators concluded that distinct patterns of fluctuating connectivity in insular subdivisions among smokers suggest altered insular dFC as a potential neural biomarker for addiction treatment.
Source: frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1353103/abstract