Kernel Granger Causality Mapping Effective Connectivity: A Resting fMRI Study

The human brain is a complex, dynamic, nonlinear system and operates far from equilibrium. The functionally connected of human brain being potentially dynamic and directional, may not be adequately captured by simple correlation, or anti-correlation. To evaluate the possible effective connectivity as well as the nonlinear effective connectivity within human brain, we applied kernel Granger causality (KGC) to the 90 cortical and subcortical regions of interest (ROIs) of resting state fMRI data. Our analysis also found the hub node that was characterized by much number of Granger causal efferent connections to this given node from any other node at different level of nonlinearity. Overall, our results revealed the causal influences and hubs among these ROI at different order of nonlinearity.

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