The relationship between spatial configuration and functional connectivity of brain regions
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- Washington University in St. Louis, United States
- King's College London, United Kingdom
- Radboud University Medical Centre, Netherlands
Abstract
Brain connectivity is often considered in terms of the communication between functionally distinct brain regions. Many studies have investigated the extent to which patterns of coupling strength between multiple neural populations relates to behaviour. For example, studies have used 'functional connectivity fingerprints' to characterise individuals' brain activity. Here, we investigate the extent to which the exact spatial arrangement of cortical regions interacts with measures of brain connectivity. We find that the shape and exact location of brain regions interact strongly with the modelling of brain connectivity, and present evidence that the spatial arrangement of functional regions is strongly predictive of non-imaging measures of behaviour and lifestyle. We believe that, in many cases, cross-subject variations in the spatial configuration of functional brain regions are being interpreted as changes in functional connectivity. Therefore, a better understanding of these effects is important when interpreting the relationship between functional imaging data and cognitive traits.
Data availability
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Human Connectome ProjectFreely available upon agreeing with Open Access Data Use Terms and Restricted Data Use Terms ( https://www.humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-young-adult/document/quick-reference-open-access-vs-restricted-data).
Article and author information
Author details
Janine Diane Bijsterbosch
Funding
National Institutes of Health (1U54MH091657)
- David C Van Essen
Wellcome (098369/Z/12/Z)
- Stephen M Smith
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (864-12-003)
- Christian F Beckmann
Wellcome (091509/Z/10/Z)
- Stephen M Smith
Wellcome (203139/Z/16/Z)
- Stephen M Smith
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: HCP data were acquired using protocols approved by the Washington University institutional review board. Informed consent was obtained from subjects. Anonymised data are publicly available from ConnectomeDB (db.humanconnectome.org; Hodge et al., 2016). Certain parts of the dataset used in this study, such as the age of the subjects, are available subject to restricted data usage terms, requiring researchers to ensure that the anonymity of subjects is protected (Van Essen et al., 2013).
Reviewing Editor
- Chris Honey
Publication history
- Received: October 20, 2017
- Accepted: February 15, 2018
- Accepted Manuscript published: February 16, 2018 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: March 20, 2018 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2018, Bijsterbosch et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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The relationship between spatial configuration and functional connectivity of brain regions
eLife 7:e32992.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.32992
Further reading
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The exact location of certain brain regions is linked to intelligence, life satisfaction and other behavioural factors.
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- Neuroscience
Previous research has associated alpha-band [8–12 Hz] oscillations with inhibitory functions: for instance, several studies showed that visual attention increases alpha-band power in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the attended location. However, other studies demonstrated that alpha oscillations positively correlate with visual perception, hinting at different processes underlying their dynamics. Here, using an approach based on traveling waves, we demonstrate that there are two functionally distinct alpha-band oscillations propagating in different directions. We analyzed EEG recordings from three datasets of human participants performing a covert visual attention task (one new dataset with N = 16, two previously published datasets with N = 16 and N = 31). Participants were instructed to detect a brief target by covertly attending to the screen’s left or right side. Our analysis reveals two distinct processes: allocating attention to one hemifield increases top-down alpha-band waves propagating from frontal to occipital regions ipsilateral to the attended location, both with and without visual stimulation. These top-down oscillatory waves correlate positively with alpha-band power in frontal and occipital regions. Yet, different alpha-band waves propagate from occipital to frontal regions and contralateral to the attended location. Crucially, these forward waves were present only during visual stimulation, suggesting a separate mechanism related to visual processing. Together, these results reveal two distinct processes reflected by different propagation directions, demonstrating the importance of considering oscillations as traveling waves when characterizing their functional role.
