Evaluación de la Conectividad Funcional Relacionada con Procesos Cognitivos en Trabajadores Expuestos a Vapores de Tolueno y Derivados

Abstract

The term “occupational exposure” is used when a person gets in touch with vapors of toluene or its derivatives in their work environment. The occupational exposure to toluene vapors represents a risk for people’s health, because due to its chemical properties, toluene threatens mainly the nervous system. Different studies have reported some alteration of cognitive and affective processes, such as empathy and working memory, due to occupational exposure to toluene. The present work proposes a seed based functional connectivity study of a group of workers occupationally exposed to toluene vapors using resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) in brain regions related to empathy and executive control using the CONN Toolbox. It was found that there are differences in the functional connectivity of the anterior insula and the caudate nucleus with other regions of the brain related to empathy and working memory when compared to a control group, and some possible effects of these differences where explored.