Altered brain neural activity in the visual cortex of patients with sellar tumors: a resting-state fMRI study

Objective: To investigate how brain neural activity changes in visual deprivation of patients with sellar tumors. Methods: Resting-state fMRI analysis was performed on 21 patients with sellar tumors and 21 sex-matched healthy volunteers. The low frequency amplitude (ALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), functional connectivity (FC) of patients and healthy controls were compared. Results: Patients with sellar tumors exhibited significantly decreased ALFF in the bilateral cuneus, left lingual gyri and right supplementary motor area, increased ALFF in bilateral lentiform nuclei (P < 0.05, corrected by FDR). Patients also showed decreased ReHo in the bilateral cuneus, increased ReHo in the precuneus, left insula, and left lentiform nucleus (P < 0.01, corrected by Al-phaSim). The ReHo values in the precuneus (P < 0.05, R = 0.423) and insula (P < 0.05, R = 0.492) correlated with the right-left tumor diameters. The high-level visual cortex (-6, -80, 27) in patients showed decreased FC with bilateral cuneus, superior parietal lobules, superior temporal gyri, supramarginal gyri, postcentral gyri, precentral gyri, and supplementary motor area. Conclusion: The patients with sellar tumors have abnormal neural activity within and beyond the visual pathway. (authors)