ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Gut-Brain Axis
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1606078
This article is part of the Research TopicRegulation of Gastrointestinal (GI) Physiology by Gut-Microbiota Interactions in Healthy and Disease ConditionsView all 4 articles
Functional Alterations in Hippocampal Subfields of Crohn's Disease Patients: A Multimodal MRI Study
Provisionally accepted
- Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China
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Background: Previous research on Crohn's disease (CD) has identified abnormalities in the amygdala, but studies focusing on the hippocampus remain limited. The objective of this study is to investigate the structural and functional changes in the hippocampal subfield of CD patients with or without perianal fistulas using a multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system.The study included 20 Crohn's disease patients without perianal fistulas (CD), 56 Crohn's disease patients with perianal fistulas (PFCD), and 20 healthy controls (HC). MRI was used to assess various brain parameters across 10 specific hippocampal subregions, including gray matter volume, amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF), regional homogeneity (ReHo), degree centrality (DC), and functional connectivity (FC). Group differences in hippocampal subregion metrics were tested with ANCOVA and Kruskal-Wallis H-tests (age and sex covariates, false-discovery-rate corrected), while multivariate patterns were visualized using principal-component analysis (PCA) and log₂ fold-change heatmaps of the same region-level functional measures.Results: Compared to HC group, PFCD group exhibited significant increases in ReHo (left subiculum) and DC (left cornu ammonis, left dentate gyrus, left subiculum, right dentate gyrus), with decreased DC in the right hippocampal-amygdaloid transition area. FC analyses revealed enhanced connectivity between hippocampal subregions and occipito-limbic cortices in PFCD relative to CD. PCA revealed partial group segregation, with fold-change heatmap indicating increased connectivity in left hippocampal subfields and decreased connectivity in right HATA in PFCD.Individuals with PFCD exhibit significant functional reorganization in hippocampal subregions compared to those with CD. These findings offer potential biomarkers for assessing and guiding treatment strategies in PFCD and deepen our understanding of the disease's neural mechanisms.
Keywords: Hippocampus, Crohn's disease, Perianal fistulizing Crohn's disease, Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging, functional connectivity, Functional reorganization
Received: 04 Apr 2025; Accepted: 12 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Chen, Wang, Liu, Haihua and Zhang. 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:
Qian Haihua, Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China
Dan Zhang, Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China
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