Interindividual differences in matrix reasoning are linked to functional connectivity between brain regions nominated by Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory

EEG studies have shown that interindividual differences in the electrophysiological properties of sleep spindles (e.g., density, amplitude, duration) are highly correlated with trait-like “reasoning” abilities (i.e., “fluid intelligence”; problem-solving skills; the ability to employ logic or identify complex patterns), but not interindividual differences in STM or “verbal” intellectual abilities. Previous simultaneous EEG-fMRI studies revealed brain activations time-locked to spindles. Our group has recently demonstrated that the extent of activation in a subset of these regions was related to interindividual differences in reasoning intellectual abilities, specifically. However, spindles reflect communication between spatially distant and functionally distinct brain areas. The functional communication among brain regions related to spindles and their relationship to reasoning abilities have yet to be investigated. Using simultaneous EEG-fMRI sleep recordings and psychophysiological interaction analysis, we identified spindle-related functional communication among brain regions in the thalamo-cortical-BG system, the salience network, and the default mode network. Furthermore, the extent of the functional connectivity of the cortical–striatal circuitry and the thalamo-cortical circuitry was specifically related to reasoning abilities but was unrelated to STM or verbal abilities, thus suggesting that individuals with higher fluid intelligence have stronger functional coupling among these brain areas during spontaneous spindle events. This may serve as a first step in further understanding the function of sleep spindles and the brain network functional communication, which support the capacity for fluid intelligence.

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Engaging regularly with fiction influences connectivity in cortical areas for language and mentalizing

10.31234/osf.io/e7bqj ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Roel M. Willems ◽

Franziska Hartung

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Time Course ◽

Language Skills ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Brain Areas ◽

Daily Lives ◽

Cortical Areas ◽

Social Abilities ◽

Behavioral Evidence ◽

Amount Of Reading

Behavioral evidence suggests that engaging with fiction is positively correlated with social abilities. The rationale behind this link is that engaging with fictional narratives offers a ‘training modus’ for mentalizing and empathizing. We investigated the influence of the amount of reading that participants report doing in their daily lives, on connections between brain areas while they listened to literary narratives. Participants (N=57) listened to two literary narratives while brain activation was measured with fMRI. We computed time-course correlations between brain regions, and compared the correlation values from listening to narratives to listening to reversed speech. The between-region correlations were then related to the amount of fiction that participants read in their daily lives. Our results show that amount of fiction reading is related to functional connectivity in areas known to be involved in language and mentalizing. This suggests that reading fiction influences social cognition as well as language skills.

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The effect of congenital blindness on resting-state functional connectivity revisited

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-91976-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Maria J. S. Guerreiro ◽

Madita Linke ◽

Sunitha Lingareddy ◽

Ramesh Kekunnaya ◽

Brigitte Röder

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Resting State ◽

Visual Experience ◽

Brain Regions ◽

State Condition ◽

Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽

Congenital Blindness ◽

Eyes Closed ◽

Congenitally Blind ◽

Eyes Open

AbstractLower resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between ‘visual’ and non-‘visual’ neural circuits has been reported as a hallmark of congenital blindness. In sighted individuals, RSFC between visual and non-visual brain regions has been shown to increase during rest with eyes closed relative to rest with eyes open. To determine the role of visual experience on the modulation of RSFC by resting state condition—as well as to evaluate the effect of resting state condition on group differences in RSFC—, we compared RSFC between visual and somatosensory/auditory regions in congenitally blind individuals (n = 9) and sighted participants (n = 9) during eyes open and eyes closed conditions. In the sighted group, we replicated the increase of RSFC between visual and non-visual areas during rest with eyes closed relative to rest with eyes open. This was not the case in the congenitally blind group, resulting in a lower RSFC between ‘visual’ and non-‘visual’ circuits relative to sighted controls only in the eyes closed condition. These results indicate that visual experience is necessary for the modulation of RSFC by resting state condition and highlight the importance of considering whether sighted controls should be tested with eyes open or closed in studies of functional brain reorganization as a consequence of blindness.

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Heritability and interindividual variability of regional structure-function coupling

Nature Communications ◽

10.1038/s41467-021-25184-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Zijin Gu ◽

Keith Wakefield Jamison ◽

Mert Rory Sabuncu ◽

Amy Kuceyeski

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Structure Function ◽

Regional Differences ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Diffusion Weighted Mri ◽

Regional Structure ◽

Human Connectome Project ◽

Structural Connections ◽

The Relationship

AbstractWhite matter structural connections are likely to support flow of functional activation or functional connectivity. While the relationship between structural and functional connectivity profiles, here called SC-FC coupling, has been studied on a whole-brain, global level, few studies have investigated this relationship at a regional scale. Here we quantify regional SC-FC coupling in healthy young adults using diffusion-weighted MRI and resting-state functional MRI data from the Human Connectome Project and study how SC-FC coupling may be heritable and varies between individuals. We show that regional SC-FC coupling strength varies widely across brain regions, but was strongest in highly structurally connected visual and subcortical areas. We also show interindividual regional differences based on age, sex and composite cognitive scores, and that SC-FC coupling was highly heritable within certain networks. These results suggest regional structure-function coupling is an idiosyncratic feature of brain organisation that may be influenced by genetic factors.

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A Connectome-Wide Functional Signature of Trait Anger

Clinical Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/21677026211030240 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 216770262110302

Author(s):

M. Justin Kim ◽

Maxwell L. Elliott ◽

Annchen R. Knodt ◽

Ahmad R. Hariri

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Visual Information ◽

Past Research ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Small Sample ◽

Trait Anger ◽

Frontal Pole ◽

Brain Correlates ◽

Small Sample Sizes ◽

The Right

Past research on the brain correlates of trait anger has been limited by small sample sizes, a focus on relatively few regions of interest, and poor test–retest reliability of functional brain measures. To address these limitations, we conducted a data-driven analysis of variability in connectome-wide functional connectivity in a sample of 1,048 young adult volunteers. Multidimensional matrix regression analysis showed that self-reported trait anger maps onto variability in the whole-brain functional connectivity patterns of three brain regions that serve action-related functions: bilateral supplementary motor areas and the right lateral frontal pole. We then demonstrate that trait anger modulates the functional connectivity of these regions with canonical brain networks supporting somatomotor, affective, self-referential, and visual information processes. Our findings offer novel neuroimaging evidence for interpreting trait anger as a greater propensity to provoked action, which supports ongoing efforts to understand its utility as a potential transdiagnostic marker for disordered states characterized by aggressive behavior.

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Effects of amnesia on processing in the hippocampus and default mode network during a naturalistic memory task: a case study

10.31234/osf.io/e9n8c ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Christiane Oedekoven ◽

James L. Keidel ◽

Stuart Anderson ◽

Angus Nisbet ◽

Chris Bird

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Episodic Memory ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Memory Task ◽

Structural Mri ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Left Hippocampus ◽

Cortical Regions ◽

The Right ◽

Encoding And Retrieval

Despite their severely impaired episodic memory, individuals with amnesia are able to comprehend ongoing events. Online representations of a current event are thought to be supported by a network of regions centred on the posterior midline cortex (PMC). By contrast, episodic memory is widely believed to be supported by interactions between the hippocampus and these cortical regions. In this MRI study, we investigated the encoding and retrieval of lifelike events (video clips) in a patient with severe amnesia likely resulting from a stroke to the right thalamus, and a group of 20 age-matched controls. Structural MRI revealed grey matter reductions in left hippocampus and left thalamus in comparison to controls. We first characterised the regions activated in the controls while they watched and retrieved the videos. There were no differences in activation between the patient and controls in any of the regions. We then identified a widespread network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, that were functionally connected with the PMC in controls. However, in the patient there was a specific reduction in functional connectivity between the PMC and a region of left hippocampus when both watching and attempting to retrieve the videos. A follow up analysis revealed that in controls the functional connectivity between these regions when watching the videos was correlated with memory performance. Taken together, these findings support the view that the interactions between the PMC and the hippocampus enable the encoding and retrieval of multimodal representations of the contents of an event.

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Structure supports function: informing directed and dynamic functional connectivity with anatomical priors

10.1101/2021.05.11.443529 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

David Pascucci ◽

Maria Rubega ◽

Joan Rue-Queralt ◽

Sebastien Tourbier ◽

Patric Hagmann ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Diffusion Tensor ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Structural Connectivity ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Noise Perturbation ◽

Eeg Data ◽

Functional Brain Networks ◽

Anatomical Priors ◽

And Diffusion

The dynamic repertoire of functional brain networks is constrained by the underlying topology of structural connections: the lack of a direct structural link between two brain regions prevents direct functional interactions. Despite the intrinsic relationship between structural (SC) and functional connectivity (FC), integrative and multimodal approaches to combine the two remain limited, especially for electrophysiological data. In the present work, we propose a new linear adaptive filter for estimating dynamic and directed FC using structural connectivity information as priors. We tested the filter in rat epicranial recordings and human event-related EEG data, using SC priors from a meta-analysis of tracer studies and diffusion tensor imaging metrics, respectively. Our results show that SC priors increase the resilience of FC estimates to noise perturbation while promoting sparser networks under biologically plausible constraints. The proposed filter provides intrinsic protection against SC-related false negatives, as well as robustness against false positives, representing a valuable new method for multimodal imaging and dynamic FC analysis.

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Functional Connectivity within Brain Networks of Long Term and Short term Meditators

International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering - Special Issue ◽

10.35940/ijitee.b1120.1292s19 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (2S) ◽

pp. 29-34

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Temporal Correlation ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Invasive Technique ◽

Long Term Effects ◽

Short Term ◽

Statistical Concept ◽

The Brain ◽

Meditative Practices

Meditation refers to a state of mind of relaxation and concentration, where generally the mind and body is at rest. The process of meditation reflects the state of the brain which is distinct from sleep or typical wakeful states of consciousness. Meditative practices usually involve regulation of emotions and monitoring of attention. Over the past decade there has been a tremendous increase in an interest to study the neural mechanisms involved in meditative practices. It could also be beneficial to explore if the effect of meditation is altered by the number of years of meditation practice. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a very useful imaging technique which can be used to perform this analysis due to its inherent benefits, mainly it being a non-invasive technique. Functional activation and connectivity analysis can be performed on the fMRI data to find the active regions and the connectivity in the brain regions. Functional connectivity is defined as a simple temporal correlation between anatomically separate, active neural regions. Functional connectivity gives the statistical dependencies between regional time series. It is a statistical concept and is quantified using metrics like Correlation. In this study, a comparison is made between functional connectivity in the brain regions of long term meditation practitioners (LTP) and short-term meditation practitioners (STP) to see the differences and similarities in the connectivity patterns. From the analysis, it is evident that in fact there is a difference in connectivity between long term and short term practitioners and hence continuous practice of meditation can have long term effects.

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A Novel Unit-Based Personalized Fingerprint Feature Selection Strategy for Dynamic Functional Connectivity Networks

Frontiers in Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnins.2021.651574 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Feng Zhao ◽

Zhiyuan Chen ◽

Islem Rekik ◽

Peiqiang Liu ◽

Ning Mao ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Feature Selection ◽

Functional Connectivity ◽

Evaluation Method ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Superior Performance ◽

Selection Strategy ◽

Dynamic Functional Connectivity ◽

Discriminative Feature ◽

Fingerprint Feature

The sliding-window-based dynamic functional connectivity networks (SW-D-FCN) derive from resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has become an increasingly useful tool in the diagnosis of various neurodegenerative diseases. However, it is still challenging to learn how to extract and select the most discriminative features from SW-D-FCN. Conventionally, existing methods opt to select a single discriminative feature set or concatenate a few more from the SW-D-FCN. However, such reductionist strategies may fail to fully capture the personalized discriminative characteristics contained in each functional connectivity (FC) sequence of the SW-D-FCN. To address this issue, we propose a unit-based personalized fingerprint feature selection (UPFFS) strategy to better capture the most discriminative feature associated with a target disease for each unit. Specifically, we regard the FC sequence between any pair of brain regions of interest (ROIs) is regarded as a unit. For each unit, the most discriminative feature is identified by a specific feature evaluation method and all the most discriminative features are then concatenated together as a feature set for the subsequent classification task. In such a way, the personalized fingerprint feature derived from each FC sequence can be fully mined and utilized in classification decision. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy, we conduct experiments to distinguish subjects diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder from normal controls. Experimental results show that the proposed strategy can select relevant discriminative features and achieve superior performance to benchmark methods.

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Changes in functional connectivity associated with facial expression processing over the working adult lifespan

10.31234/osf.io/yrkbw ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas Murray ◽

Justin O'Brien ◽

Veena Kumari

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Brain Connectivity ◽

Negative Emotions ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Emotional Expressions ◽

Expression Recognition ◽

Frontal Pole ◽

Adult Lifespan ◽

Age Related

The recognition of negative emotions from facial expressions is shown to decline across the adult lifespan, with some evidence that this decline begins around middle age. While some studies have suggested ageing may be associated with changes in neural response to emotional expressions, it is not known whether ageing is associated with changes in the network connectivity associated with processing emotional expressions. In this study, we examined the effect of participant age on whole-brain connectivity to various brain regions that have been associated with connectivity during emotion processing: the left and right amygdalae, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS). The study involved healthy participants aged 20-65 who viewed facial expressions displaying anger, fear, happiness, and neutral expressions during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found effects of age on connectivity between the left amygdala and voxels in the occipital pole and cerebellum, between the right amygdala and voxels in the frontal pole, and between the rpSTS and voxels in the orbitofrontal cortex, but no effect of age on connectivity with the mPFC. Furthermore, ageing was more greatly associated with a decline in connectivity to the left amygdala and rpSTS for negative expressions in comparison to happy and neutral expressions, consistent with the literature suggesting a specific age-related decline in the recognition of negative emotions. These results add to the literature surrounding ageing and expression recognition by suggesting that changes in underlying functional connectivity might contribute to changes in recognition of negative facial expressions across the adult lifespan.

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