Clark Glymour | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2016

Scale-Free Exponents of Resting State are Biomarkers of Neuro-Typical and Atypical Brain Activity

Scale-free networks (SFN) arise from simple growth processes, which can encourage efficient, centralized and fault tolerant communication (1). Recently its been shown that stable network hub structure is governed by a phase transition at exponents (>2.0) causing a dramatic change in network structure including a loss of global connectivity, an increasing minimum dominating node set, and a shift towards increasing connectivity growth compared to node growth. Is this SFN shift identifiable in atypical brain activity? The Pareto Distribution (P(D)[~]D{wedge}-{beta}) on the hub Degree (D) is a signature of scale-free networks. During resting-state, we assess Degree exponents across a large range of neurotypical and atypical subjects. We use graph complexity theory to provide a predictive theory of the brain network structure. Results.We show that neurotypical resting-state fMRI brain activity possess scale-free Pareto exponents (1.8 se .01) in a single individual scanned over 66 days as well as in 60 different individuals (1.8 se .02). We also show that 60 individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, and 60 individuals with Schizophrenia have significantly higher (>2.0) scale-free exponents (2.4 se .03, 2.3 se .04), indicating more fractionated and less controllable dynamics in the brain networks revealed in resting state. Finally we show that the exponent values vary with phenotypic measures of atypical disease severity indicating that the global topology of the network itself can provide specific diagnostic biomarkers for atypical brain activity.

Bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2016

Estimation of Voxelwise Effective Connectivities: Applications to High Connectivity Sub-Regions within Hippocampal and within Corticostriatal Networks

Standard BOLD connectivity analyses depend on aggregating the signals of individual voxel within regions of interest (ROIs). In certain cases, this aggregation implies a loss of valuable functional and anatomical information about sub-regions of voxels that drive the ROI level connectivity. We describe a data-driven statistical search method that identifies the voxels that are chiefly responsible for exchanging signals between regions of interest that are known to be effectively connected. We apply the method to high-resolution resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data from medial temporal lobe regions of interest of a single healthy individual measured repeated times over a year and a half. The method successfully recovered densely connected voxels within larger ROIs of entorhinal cortex and hippocampus subfields consistent with the well-known medial temporal lobe structural connectivity. To assess the performance of our method in more common scanning protocols we apply it to resting state fMRI data of corticostriatal regions of interest for 50 healthy individuals. The method recovered densely connected voxels within the caudate nucleus and the putamen in good qualitative agreement with structural connectivity measurements. We describe related methods for estimation of effective connections at the voxel level that merit investigation.

Neuroscience↗