ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Imaging Methods
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1576535
Distinct effects of global signal regression on brain activity during propofol and sevoflurane anesthesia
Provisionally accepted
- 1Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China
- 2Department of Anesthesiology, International Hospital, Peking University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 3Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine, Indiana University Bloomington, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
- 4IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, Beijing, China
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Global signal regression (GSR) is widely used in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis, yet its effects on anesthetic-related brain activity are not well understood. Using fMRI data from patients under general anesthesia, we analyzed temporal variability indices, amplitude of lowfrequency fluctuations, functional connectivity, and graph theoretical measures with and without GSR. Here we show that GSR differentially affects brain activity patterns during propofol-and sevoflurane-induced unconsciousness. While temporal variability indices decreased similarly between conscious and unconscious states regardless of GSR, functional connectivity analyses revealed anesthetic-specific effects: GSR altered specific network connections under propofol but broadly reduced connectivity differences under sevoflurane. Network topology analyses demonstrated that GSR minimally affected propofol-induced changes in graph theoretical measures but significantly diminished sevoflurane-related network alterations. These findings reveal that GSR's impact on functional brain organization is anesthetic-specific, with sevoflurane-induced changes being particularly sensitive to global signal removal. Our results suggest that GSR should be applied cautiously when comparing different anesthetic agents and highlight the importance of considering drug-specific effects when analyzing consciousness-related brain activity.
Keywords: fMRI 1, general anesthesia 2, global signal 3, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation 4, graph theory 5
Received: 14 Feb 2025; Accepted: 06 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu, Li, Wang, Chen, Yang, Li, Yao and Liang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhenhu Liang, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China
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