scholarly journals The Global Signal and Observed Anticorrelated Resting State Brain Networks

2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (6) ◽  
pp. 3270-3283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Fox ◽  
Dongyang Zhang ◽  
Abraham Z. Snyder ◽  
Marcus E. Raichle

Resting state studies of spontaneous fluctuations in the functional MRI (fMRI) blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal have shown great promise in mapping the brain's intrinsic, large-scale functional architecture. An important data preprocessing step used to enhance the quality of these observations has been removal of spontaneous BOLD fluctuations common to the whole brain (the so-called global signal). One reproducible consequence of global signal removal has been the finding that spontaneous BOLD fluctuations in the default mode network and an extended dorsal attention system are consistently anticorrelated, a relationship that these two systems exhibit during task performance. The dependence of these resting-state anticorrelations on global signal removal has raised important questions regarding the nature of the global signal, the validity of global signal removal, and the appropriate interpretation of observed anticorrelated brain networks. In this study, we investigate several properties of the global signal and find that it is, indeed, global, not residing preferentially in systems exhibiting anticorrelations. We detail the influence of global signal removal on resting state correlation maps both mathematically and empirically, showing an enhancement in detection of system-specific correlations and improvement in the correspondence between resting-state correlations and anatomy. Finally, we show that several characteristics of anticorrelated networks including their spatial distribution, cross-subject consistency, presence with modified whole brain masks, and existence before global regression are not attributable to global signal removal and therefore suggest a biological basis.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannes Almgren ◽  
Frederik Van de Steen ◽  
Simone Kühn ◽  
Adeel Razi ◽  
Karl Friston ◽  
...  

AbstractDynamic causal modelling (DCM) for resting state fMRI – namely spectral DCM – is a recently developed and widely adopted method for inferring effective connectivity in intrinsic brain networks. Most research applying spectral DCM has focused on group-averaged connectivity within large-scale intrinsic brain networks; however, the consistency of subject- and session-specific estimates of effective connectivity has not been evaluated. Establishing reliability (within subjects) is crucial for its clinical use; e.g., as a neurophysiological phenotype of disease progression. Effective connectivity during rest is likely to vary due to changes in cognitive, behavioural, and physical states. Determining the sources of fluctuations in effective connectivity may yield greater understanding of brain processes and inform clinical applications about potential confounds. In the present study, we investigated the consistency of effective connectivity within and between subjects, as well as potential sources of variability (e.g., hemispheric asymmetry). We further investigated how standard procedures for data processing and signal extraction affect this consistency. DCM analyses were applied to four longitudinal resting state fMRI datasets. Our sample consisted of 20 subjects with 653 resting state fMRI sessions in total. These data allowed to quantify the robustness of connectivity estimates for each subject, and to draw conclusions beyond specific data features. We found that subjects contributing to all datasets showed systematic and reliable patterns of hemispheric asymmetry. When asymmetry was taken into account, subjects showed very similar connectivity patterns. We also found that various processing procedures (e.g. global signal regression and ROI size) had little effect on inference and reliability of connectivity for the majority of subjects. Bayesian model reduction increased reliability (within-subjects) and stability (between-subjects) of connectivity patterns.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 2050061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camillo Porcaro ◽  
Stephen D. Mayhew ◽  
Marco Marino ◽  
Dante Mantini ◽  
Andrew P. Bagshaw

Intrinsic brain activity is organized into large-scale networks displaying specific structural–functional architecture, known as resting-state networks (RSNs). RSNs reflect complex neurophysiological processes and interactions, and have a central role in distinct sensory and cognitive functions, making it crucial to understand and quantify their anatomical and functional properties. Fractal dimension (FD) provides a parsimonious way of summarizing self-similarity over different spatial and temporal scales but despite its suitability for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal analysis its ability to characterize and investigate RSNs is poorly understood. We used FD in a large sample of healthy participants to differentiate fMRI RSNs and examine how the FD property of RSNs is linked with their functional roles. We identified two clusters of RSNs, one mainly consisting of sensory networks (C1, including auditory, sensorimotor and visual networks) and the other more related to higher cognitive (HCN) functions (C2, including dorsal default mode network and fronto-parietal networks). These clusters were defined in a completely data-driven manner using hierarchical clustering, suggesting that quantification of Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) signal complexity with FD is able to characterize meaningful physiological and functional variability. Understanding the mechanisms underlying functional RSNs, and developing tools to study their signal properties, is essential for assessing specific brain alterations and FD could potentially be used for the early detection and treatment of neurological disorders.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhishek Uday Patil ◽  
Sejal Ghate ◽  
Deepa Madathil ◽  
Ovid J. L. Tzeng ◽  
Hsu-Wen Huang ◽  
...  

AbstractCreative cognition is recognized to involve the integration of multiple spontaneous cognitive processes and is manifested as complex networks within and between the distributed brain regions. We propose that the processing of creative cognition involves the static and dynamic re-configuration of brain networks associated with complex cognitive processes. We applied the sliding-window approach followed by a community detection algorithm and novel measures of network flexibility on the blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal of 8 major functional brain networks to reveal static and dynamic alterations in the network reconfiguration during creative cognition using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our results demonstrate the temporal connectivity of the dynamic large-scale creative networks between default mode network (DMN), salience network, and cerebellar network during creative cognition, and advance our understanding of the network neuroscience of creative cognition.


2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 10-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela V. Spalatro ◽  
Federico Amianto ◽  
Zirui Huang ◽  
Federico D’Agata ◽  
Mauro Bergui ◽  
...  

AbstractBackground:Despite the great number of resting state functional connectivity studies on Eating Disorders (ED), no biomarkers could be detected yet. Therefore, we here focus on a different measure of resting state activity that is neuronal variability. The objective of this study was to investigate neuronal variability in the resting state of women with ED and to correlate possible differences with clinical and psychopathological indices.Methods:58 women respectively 25 with Anorexia Nervosa (AN), 16 with Bulimia Nervosa (BN) and 17 matched healthy controls (CN) were enrolled for the study. All participants were tested with a battery of psychometric tests and underwent a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) resting state scanning. We investigated topographical patterns of variability measured by the Standard Deviation (SD) of the Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent (BOLD) signal (as a measure of neuronal variability) in the resting-state and their relationship to clinical and psychopathological indices.Results:Neuronal variability was increased in both anorectic and bulimic subjects specifically in the Ventral Attention Network (VAN) compared to healthy controls. No significant differences were found in the other networks. Significant correlations were found between neuronal variability of VAN and various clinical and psychopathological indices.Conclusions:We here show increased neuronal variability of VAN in ED patients. As the VAN is relevant for switching between endogenous and exogenous stimuli, our results showing increased neuronal variability suggest unstable balance between body attention and attention to external world. These results offer new perspective on the neurobiological basis of ED. Clinical and therapeutic implication will be discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifei Zhang ◽  
Xiaodan Chen ◽  
Xinyuan Liang ◽  
Zhijiang Wang ◽  
Teng Xie ◽  
...  

The topological organization of human brain networks can be mathematically characterized by the connectivity degree distribution of network nodes. However, there is no clear consensus on whether the topological structure of brain networks follows a power law or other probability distributions, and whether it is altered in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here we employed resting-state functional MRI and graph theory approaches to investigate the fitting of degree distributions of the whole-brain functional networks and seven subnetworks in healthy subjects and individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), i.e., the prodromal stage of AD, and whether they are altered and correlated with cognitive performance in patients. Forty-one elderly cognitively healthy controls and 30 aMCI subjects were included. We constructed functional connectivity matrices among brain voxels and examined nodal degree distributions that were fitted by maximum likelihood estimation. In the whole-brain networks and all functional subnetworks, the connectivity degree distributions were fitted better by the Weibull distribution [f(x)~x(β−1)e(−λxβ)] than power law or power law with exponential cutoff. Compared with the healthy control group, the aMCI group showed lower Weibull β parameters (shape factor) in both the whole-brain networks and all seven subnetworks (false-discovery rate-corrected, p < 0.05). These decreases of the Weibull β parameters in the whole-brain networks and all subnetworks except for ventral attention were associated with reduced cognitive performance in individuals with aMCI. Thus, we provided a short-tailed model to capture intrinsic connectivity structure of the human brain functional networks in health and disease.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Rabuffo ◽  
Jan Fousek ◽  
Christophe Bernard ◽  
Viktor Jirsa

AbstractAt rest, mammalian brains display a rich complex spatiotemporal behavior, which is reminiscent of healthy brain function and has provided nuanced understandings of several major neurological conditions. Despite the increasingly detailed phenomenological documentation of the brain’s resting state, its principle underlying causes remain unknown. To establish causality, we link structurally defined features of a brain network model to neural activation patterns and their variability. For the mouse, we use a detailed connectome-based model and simulate the resting state dynamics for neural sources and whole brain imaging signals (Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent (BOLD), Electroencephalography (EEG)). Under conditions of near-criticality, characteristic neuronal cascades form spontaneously and propagate through the network. The largest neuronal cascades produce short-lived but robust co-fluctuations at pairs of regions across the brain. During these co-activation episodes, long-lasting functional networks emerge giving rise to epochs of stable resting state networks correlated in time. Sets of neural cascades are typical for a resting state network, but different across. We experimentally confirm the existence and stability of functional connectivity epochs comprising BOLD co-activation bursts in mice (N=19). We further demonstrate the leading role of the neuronal cascades in a simultaneous EEG/fMRI data set in humans (N=15), explaining a large part of the variability of functional connectivity dynamics. We conclude that short-lived neuronal cascades are a major robust dynamic component contributing to the organization of the slowly evolving spontaneous fluctuations in brain dynamics at rest.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 435-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garth J. Thompson ◽  
Valentin Riedl ◽  
Timo Grimmer ◽  
Alexander Drzezga ◽  
Peter Herman ◽  
...  

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