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Purpose: Little is known about the neural mechanism of specific training to improve doctor-patient communication skill.To elucidate the influence of doctor-patient communication training on the intrinsic functional architecture of the human brain by using resting-state functional MRI with a regional homogeneity(ReHo)method.Materials and Methods: Ten medical students(4 female/6 male)with average age of 25 years participated in the study.A doctor-patient communication skill training program was conducted on these ten subjects and lasted for 1 year.Resting state functional MRI data were collected at three time-points:(i)during the introduction to the training before the actual training started,(ii)1 month after the training course and(Ⅲ)at the end of the course after 1 year of training.The Kendalls coefficient of concordance(KCC)was used to measure the ReHo.The ReHo maps were compared between pre-and post-training with paired t test.Pearson correlation was performed to measure the association between the post-training ReHo values and scale scores.Results: Higher average scores at 1-month follow-up than the baseline reached statistical significance(P<0.001).At the 1-month follow-up after communication skill training,the medical students showed decreased ReHo in the right superior temporal gyrus(STG)compared with the baseline.The 1-month scale score positively correlated with ReHo values in the left SFG(P< 0.05,AlphaSim corrected).Furthermore,at the 1-year follow-up,the participants demonstrated increased ReHo in the superior frontal gyrus(SFG),inferior frontal gyrus(IFG),middle frontal gyrus(MidFG),medial frontal gyrus(MFG),anterior cingulate cortex(ACC),thalamus,amygdala,and insula,and decreased ReHo in the posterior cingulate cortex(PCC)and parahippocampal gyrus(P < 0.05,Alphasim corrected).Conclusion: The medical students attained satisfactory significant improvement in doctor-patient communication skill after intensive training,indicating that the training program we used to be an effective approach of improving doctor-patient communication.Furthermore,our fMRI findings provided evidence for the functional plasticity of the brains intrinsic architecture toward optimizing locally functional organization.