June 2023
Volume 64, Issue 8
Open Access
ARVO Annual Meeting Abstract  |   June 2023
Altered functional connectivity of the habenula and its implications in anxiety and visual cognition in glaucoma
Author Affiliations & Notes
  • Laura Massi
    Department of Ophthalmology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
    Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering “Guglielmo Marconi” - DEI, Universita degli Studi di Bologna, Cesena, 47521, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
  • Ji Won Bang
    Department of Ophthalmology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
  • Carlos Parra
    Department of Ophthalmology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
  • Jeannie M. Au
    Department of Ophthalmology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
  • Gadi Wollstein
    Department of Ophthalmology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, New York, New York, United States
  • Joel S Schuman
    Department of Ophthalmology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
    Department of Biomedical Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, New York, New York, United States
  • Kevin C. Chan
    Department of Ophthalmology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
    Department of Radiology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, NYU Langone Health, New York, New York, United States
  • Footnotes
    Commercial Relationships   Laura Massi None; Ji Won Bang None; Carlos Parra None; Jeannie Au None; Gadi Wollstein None; Joel Schuman Zeiss, Code P (Patent); Kevin Chan None
  • Footnotes
    Support  This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health R01-EY028125, R01-EY013178, and P41-EB017183 (Bethesda, Maryland), BrightFocus Foundation G2016030, G2019103, and G2021001F (Clarksburg, Maryland), and an unrestricted grant from Research to Prevent Blindness to NYU Langone Health Department of Ophthalmology (New York, New York).
Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science June 2023, Vol.64, 3262. doi:
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    • Get Citation

      Laura Massi, Ji Won Bang, Carlos Parra, Jeannie M. Au, Gadi Wollstein, Joel S Schuman, Kevin C. Chan; Altered functional connectivity of the habenula and its implications in anxiety and visual cognition in glaucoma. Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 2023;64(8):3262.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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Abstract

Purpose : Recent studies reported that glaucoma involves anxiety and deficits in visual attention. However, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms. The habenula is a subcortical brain structure known to mediate stress, anxiety, and visual attention. It receives projections from the retinal ganglion cells, which are susceptible to glaucomatous damage, and then sends signals to the cortex. Therefore, here we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RSfMRI) to determine whether the functional connectivity (FC) of the habenula is altered in glaucoma and whether the altered FC is associated with the inner retina.

Methods : Forty-seven glaucoma patients (age=65.4 ± 9.2 years, mean ± S.D.) and twenty-seven healthy controls (age=63.9 ± 7.7 years, mean ± S.D.) underwent anatomical MRI and RSfMRI at 3 Tesla. The left and right habenulae were used as seeds for seed-to-voxel FC analyses. An ANCOVA statistical test was applied to detect significant group differences regressing out the age effect. For whole-brain voxel-level analyses, we used p-uncorrected<0.001 for voxel-level threshold and false discovery rate (FDR)-adjusted p (p-FDR)<0.05 for cluster-level threshold. For correlation analyses, we associated FC with macular ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (mGCIPL) thickness and peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL) thickness obtained from optical coherence tomography.

Results : Altered FC of the right habenula was observed in the right inferior (iLOC) and superior lateral occipital cortex (sLOC), left occipital pole (OP), and left posterior temporal gyrus (TG) in glaucoma (Fig 1a-b). Specifically, diverging patterns of FC changes were observed, with increased FC in the occipital areas (iLOC p-FDR=0.003, sLOC p-FDR=0.003, OP p-FDR=0.012) but decreased FC in TG (p-FDR=0.003) (Fig 1c) that is involved in anxiety and visual awareness. These FC values were significantly correlated with mGCIPL and pRNFL thicknesses (p<0.05) (Fig 2a-b). No FC change was observed in the left habenula with other brain regions (p>0.05).

Conclusions : The right habenula presents different levels of FC changes with higher-order visual and anxiety-related brain areas in glaucoma as the inner retina thins. These findings confirm the widespread brain involvement in glaucoma and may explain why some patients experience anxiety and visual cognitive deficits with increasing disease severity.

This abstract was presented at the 2023 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in New Orleans, LA, April 23-27, 2023.

 

 

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