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Abstract #3572

Wavelet Analysis of the Small-World Human Brain Functional Network in Adolescents Prenatally Exposed to Cocaine

Lei Jiang1, Zhihao Li1, Claire Coles2, Mary Lynch2, Xiaoping Hu1

1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States; 2Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, United States


Children and adolescents prenatally exposed to cocaine are at high risk not only for attention/arousal dysregulation and possible inefficiencies in some cognitive functions, but also for problems such as antisocial behavior, substance abuse, and emotional disorders. Because functional brain networks detected in resting-state fMRI have a small-world architecture that reflects a robust functional organization of the brain, here we examined whether this functional organization is disrupted in prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) by employing a wavelet analysis method. The results show that dysfunctional integrations occur in the brains of PCE individuals during the resting state. Differences between sub-bands were also observed in the small-world analysis. Our findings highlight the need to consider different frequency bands and the usefulness of wavelets in functional connectivity analyses of resting state fMRI.

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