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Register a new userThe topology of large Open Connectome networks for the human brain
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The structural human connectome (i.e. the network of fiber connections in the brain) can be analyzed at ever finer spatial resolution thanks to advances in neuroimaging. Here we analyze several large data sets for the human brain network made available by the Open Connectome Project. We apply statistical model selection to characterize the degree distributions of graphs containing up to $simeq 10^6$ nodes and $simeq 10^8$ edges. A three-parameter generalized Weibull (also known as a stretched exponential) distribution is a good fit to most of the observed degree distributions. For almost all networks, simple power laws cannot fit the data, but in some cases there is statistical support for power laws with an exponential cutoff. We also calculate the topological (graph) dimension $D$ and the small-world coefficient $sigma$ of these networks. While $sigma$ suggests a small-world topology, we found that $D < 4$ showing that long-distance connections provide only a small correction to the topology of the embedding three-dimensional space.
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The wiring diagram of the mouse brain has recently been mapped at a mesoscopic scale in the Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas. Axonal projections from brain regions were traced using green fluoresent proteins. The resulting data were registered to a common three-dimensional reference space. They yielded a matrix of connection strengths between 213 brain regions. Global features such as closed loops formed by connections of similar intensity can be inferred using tools from persistent homology. We map the wiring diagram of the mouse brain to a simplicial complex (filtered by connection strengths). We work out generators of the first homology group. Some regions, including nucleus accumbens, are connected to the entire brain by loops, whereas no region has non-zero connection strength to all brain regions. Thousands of loops go through the isocortex, the striatum and the thalamus. On the other hand, medulla is the only major brain compartment that contains more than 100 loops.
Neural electromagnetic (EM) signals recorded non-invasively from individual human subjects vary in complexity and magnitude. Nonetheless, variation in neural activity has been difficult to quantify and interpret, due to complex, broad-band features in the frequency domain. Studying signals recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) from healthy young adult subjects while in resting and active states, a systematic framework inspired by thermodynamics is applied to neural EM signals. Despite considerable inter-subject variation in terms of spectral entropy and energy across time epochs, data support the existence of a robust and linear relationship defining an effective state equation, with higher energy and lower entropy in the resting state compared to active, consistently across subjects. Mechanisms underlying the emergence of relationships between empirically measured effective state functions are further investigated using a model network of coupled oscillators, suggesting an interplay between noise and coupling strength can account for coherent variation of empirically observed quantities. Taken together, the results show macroscopic neural observables follow a robust, non-trivial conservation rule for energy modulation and information generation.
As a person learns a new skill, distinct synapses, brain regions, and circuits are engaged and change over time. In this paper, we develop methods to examine patterns of correlated activity across a large set of brain regions. Our goal is to identify properties that enable robust learning of a motor skill. We measure brain activity during motor sequencing and characterize network properties based on coherent activity between brain regions. Using recently developed algorithms to detect time-evolving communities, we find that the complex reconfiguration patterns of the brains putative functional modules that control learning can be described parsimoniously by the combined presence of a relatively stiff temporal core that is composed primarily of sensorimotor and visual regions whose connectivity changes little in time and a flexible temporal periphery that is composed primarily of multimodal association regions whose connectivity changes frequently. The separation between temporal core and periphery changes over the course of training and, importantly, is a good predictor of individual differences in learning success. The core of dynamically stiff regions exhibits dense connectivity, which is consistent with notions of core-periphery organization established previously in social networks. Our results demonstrate that core-periphery organization provides an insightful way to understand how putative functional modules are linked. This, in turn, enables the prediction of fundamental human capacities, including the production of complex goal-directed behavior.
We implement the dynamical Ising model on the large scale architecture of white matter connections of healthy subjects in the age range 4-85 years, and analyze the dynamics in terms of the synergy, a quantity measuring the extent to which the joint state of pairs of variables is projected onto the dynamics of a target one. We find that the amount of synergy in explaining the dynamics of the hubs of the structural connectivity (in terms of degree strength) peaks before the critical temperature, and can thus be considered as a precursor of a critical transition. Conversely the greatest amount of synergy goes into explaining the dynamics of more central nodes. We also find that the aging of the structural connectivity is associated to significant changes in the simulated dynamics: there are brain regions whose synergy decreases with age, in particular the frontal pole, the Subcallosal area and the Supplementary Motor area; these areas could then be more likely to show a decline in terms of the capability to perform higher order computation (if structural connectivity was the sole variable). On the other hand, several regions in the temporal cortex show a positive correlation with age in the first 30 years of life, i.e. during brain maturation.
Network neuroscience shed some light on the functional and structural modifications occurring to the brain associated with the phenomenology of schizophrenia. In particular, resting-state functional networks have helped our understanding of the illness by highlighting the global and local alterations within the cerebral organization. We investigated the robustness of the brain functional architecture in forty-four medicated schizophrenic patients and forty healthy comparators through an advanced network analysis of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data. The networks in patients showed more resistance to disconnection than in healthy controls, with an evident discrepancy between the two groups in the node degree distribution computed along a percolation process. Despite a substantial similarity of the basal functional organization between the two groups, the expected hierarchy of healthy brains modular organization is crumbled in schizophrenia, showing a peculiar arrangement of the functional connections, characterized by several topologically equivalent backbones.
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