Method for constructing brain functional networks based on fMRI data

The human brain can be explored by the quantitative analysis of complex networks.To construct brain functional networks derived from fMRI,divided the whole brain into 90 functional regions using the anatomically labelled template,and defined each brain area as a network node;then estimated functional connectivity by calculating the correlation between the mean time series of each pair of brain regions;thresholded the resulting connectivity matrix to generate a set of undirected binary graphs and further analyzed topological parameters.The results demonstrate that the human brain functional networks have robust small-world properties.The proposed method can be applied to some of the clinical diagnosis of cognitive impairment.