Fig. 2

The typical neuroimaging findings associated with midazolam-induced sedation. A The experimental paradigm of functional studies with midazolam. (a) Volunteers received midazolam in one session and saline in the other. Two sessions were randomly assigned to either midazolam or saline. (b) Scan 1 represented a pre-injection imaging section and scan 2 represented a post-injection imaging section. B Early ASL and PET studies revealed that midazolam-induced sedation was consistently correlated with a reduction in cerebral blood flow in the thalamus and the posterior cortical areas (precuneus or PCC). C Significantly increased amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) was observed in lower-level resting-state networks (e.g., SMN) during midazolam-induced sedation. D Modified resting-state functional connectivity within and between networks during midazolam-induced sedation. (a) Changes of resting-state functional connectivity within networks during midazolam-induced sedation, adapted from Liang et al. [66]; Wiley, USA. Under sedation, decreased cortico-cortical connectivity was found in higher-order brain networks, including the frontoparietal network (FPN) and language network (LAN). In contrast, functional connectivity in low-level networks was intact, including the sensorimotor network (SMN) and auditory network (AN). (b) Altered resting-state functional connectivity between networks. Midazolam significantly decreased the anticorrelation between the dorsal attention network (DAN) and default mode network (DMN)