Analysis Of Large-scale Functional And Structrual Networks Based On E-sportsmen

E-sport is one kind of electronic games which focus on competition. As a profession, E-sports also has been widely focused recently. According to recent findings, people who experience E-sports frequently experience have better cognitive performances in tasks involved attention, working-memory and sensorimotor integration. Therefore, some researchers suggested that E-sports can be suit well as the intervention model to counteract known risk factors such as cognitive decline, brain injury, dyslexic and weak sight. However, the large scale structrual and functional networks in E-sportsmen are also unclear. And large scale network is thought as a basic brain structural pattern which is simultaneously segregated and integrated via specific connectivity patterns. The study of the large scale structural and functional network in E-sport experts can reveal the effects of E-sports on brain plasticity.In this paper, 28 E-sports experts who have at least 6 years of experience in tournaments and training and 38 matched gender and age with the experts amateurs participated in the experiment. First, we do the white matter fiber tractography use Diffusion tensor imaging tractography to constructe the white matter structural network. Then, we calculated the topological attribute of the structural network using graph theory. We investigated the change of structural connections and the impact of the topological and nodal properties of the networks caused by the long-term training. The results showed that, compared with the amateurs, the increased structural connections of E-sports experts mainly compassed in the prefrontal cortex. We also found that E-sports experts had higher global efficiency and local efficiency and clustering coefficient than amateurs. The increased global efficiency showed that long-term training perhaps enhanced the function integration ability of the whole brain networks and improved the conversion efficiency of information. The increased local efficiency and clustering coefficient showed that the specific information processing ability of E-sports experts was improved and enhanced the whole brain functional segmentation ability. The changes of the structural network’s nodal properties are mainly compassed in some hub areas which involved cognitive control and sensorimotor. We utilized the AAL template to extracte the time courses of voxles in each brain region(90 regions), and averaged them. Then, the correlation between brain areas was calculated to construct the large scale functional network and compute the topological attribute of functional network. The result showed that the increased functional connections of E-sports experts mainly contained precuneus and limbic node, and these results further illustrated the increased connection in E-sports experts may related to the enhancement of cognitive control and sensorimotor. Meanwhile the change of topological attribute of functional network mainly located in the regions related with the attention, perception and the limbic system. This result did not only show the professional way of processing information, but also illustrated the integration ability of special information.This study showed the changes of the topological attributes of structural and functional network in E-sports experts. Meanwhile, the connection changes of structural and functional network mainly located in areas associated with sensorimotor and cognitive control. Furthermore, these changes perhaps were related to the good cognitive control and sensorimotor ability of E-sports experts. In brief, long-term participation in E-sports may lead to changes in brain structure and function which can be applied in education and health care of specific populations.