The influence of global signal in investigating the BOLD-fMRI during
Propofol and Sevoflurane Induced Unconsciousness
Abstract
The global signal (GS) in the brain potentially carries information that
related with neural activities. However, the impacts of the GS on the
interpretation of the consciousness-related measures during different
types of anesthetics-induced unconsciousness remain unknown. Thirteen
glioma patients underwent propofol and sevoflurane induced general
anesthesia were enrolled for analysis. Blood oxygenation level dependent
(BOLD) signals were recorded for all patients in awake state (i.e.,
baseline) and general anesthesia (i.e., unconscious state) by using
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Under the scenario of with
GS and without GS, we examined the temporal variability and amplitude of
low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) to analyze the BLOD changes. The
functional connectivity and brain networks were analyzed to investigate
the alteration in different brain regions. In time domain and frequency
domain analysis, both anesthetics significantly decreased in standard
deviation (SD) (BF10 > 3) under both scenarios. While
comparing baseline to the unconscious state, only propofol exhibited a
significant normalized ALFF reduction under with GS scenario (BF10
> 3). In functional connectivity analysis, removing GS
changed the significance of functional connectivity especially in Limbic
network and Default network for propofol. For sevoflurane, most of
functional connectivity (FC) significances were remarkably altered. In
brain network analysis, removing GS changed the nodal indices, with
different effects on different networks. In summary, for both
anesthetics, the effects of GS had noticeable impacts on in functional
connectivity and brain networks analysis-based measures. GS has a
significant impact on explaining the changes of anesthetics induced
functional connectivity and brain networks.