An Investigation of Functional and Anatomical Connectivity Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging

This article examines functional and anatomical connectivity in healthy human subjects measured with magnetic resonance imaging methods. Anatomical connectivity in white matter is obtained from measurements of the diffusion tensor. A Monte-Carlo simulation determines the probability that a particle diffuses between two points, with the probability of a jump in a particular direction from a given voxel being based on the local value of the diffusion tensor components. Functional connectivity between grey matter pixels is assessed without recourse to a specific activation paradigm, by calculating the correlation coefficient between random fluctuations in the blood oxygenation level-dependent signal time course in different pixels. The methods are used to examine the anatomical and functional connectivities between crowns of adjacent gyri. A high functional connectivity was found between grey matter pixels, with white matter displaying only very low correlation. A comparison of the measurements of anatomical and functional connectivity found that there is no simple correlation between these measures, except that low values of functional connectivity were not found together with high values of anatomical connectivity. Furthermore pairs of regions situated around the central sulcus indicated a dependence of the two connectivity measures on each other. These results are in accordance with an interpretation that regions which are clearly directly linked by white matter fiber tracts should show high functional connectivity, but that the inverse need not be true as functional connectivity may also be indirectly mediated via more distant grey matter regions.

[1]  K. Pearson.  Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution. III. Regression, Heredity, and Panmixia , 1896 .

[2]  A. Einstein.  Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen [AdP 17, 549 (1905)] , 2005, Annalen der Physik.

[3]  J. E. Tanner,et al.  Spin diffusion measurements : spin echoes in the presence of a time-dependent field gradient , 1965 .

[4]  A. Miodoński.  The angioarchitectonics and cytoarchitectonics (impregnation modo Golgi-Cox) structure of the fissural frontal neocortex in dog. , 1974, Folia biologica.

[5]  K. Brodmann.  Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Großhirnrinde : in ihren Prinzipien dargestellt auf Grund des Zellenbaues , 1985 .

[6]  G. Johnson,et al.  The limitations of NMR recalled-echo imaging techniques , 1985 .

[7]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical recipes in C. The art of scientific computing , 1987 .

[8]  S. Ogawa,et al.  Oxygenation‐sensitive contrast in magnetic resonance image of rodent brain at high magnetic fields , 1990, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[9]  D. Tank,et al.  Brain magnetic resonance imaging with contrast dependent on blood oxygenation. , 1990, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[10]  S. Ogawa.  Brain magnetic resonance imaging with contrast-dependent oxygenation , 1990 .

[11]  D. Baylor,et al.  Synchronous bursts of action potentials in ganglion cells of the developing mammalian retina. , 1991, Science.

[12]  D. J. Felleman,et al.  Distributed hierarchical processing in the primate cerebral cortex. , 1991, Cerebral cortex.

[13]  E. Capaldi,et al.  The organization of behavior. , 1992, Journal of applied behavior analysis.

[14]  D. Norris,et al.  On the application of ultra‐fast rare experiments , 1992, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[15]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Functional Connectivity: The Principal-Component Analysis of Large (PET) Data Sets , 1993, Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism.

[16]  E. Golanov,et al.  Spontaneous waves of cerebral blood flow associated with a pattern of electrocortical activity. , 1994, The American journal of physiology.

[17]  P. Basser,et al.  Estimation of the effective self-diffusion tensor from the NMR spin echo. , 1994, Journal of magnetic resonance. Series B.

[18]  P. Basser,et al.  MR diffusion tensor spectroscopy and imaging. , 1994, Biophysical journal.

[19]  B. Biswal,et al.  Functional connectivity in the motor cortex of resting human brain using echo‐planar mri , 1995, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[20]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Schizophrenia: a disconnection syndrome? , 1995, Clinical neuroscience.

[21]  Y. Frégnac.  Dynamics of functional connectivity in visual cortical networks: An overview , 1996, Journal of Physiology-Paris.

[22]  P. Basser,et al.  Microstructural and physiological features of tissues elucidated by quantitative-diffusion-tensor MRI. , 1996, Journal of magnetic resonance. Series B.

[23]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Movement‐Related effects in fMRI time‐series , 1996, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[24]  B. Biswal,et al.  Simultaneous assessment of flow and BOLD signals in resting‐state functional connectivity maps , 1997, NMR in biomedicine.

[25]  M. Lowe,et al.  Functional Connectivity in Single and Multislice Echoplanar Imaging Using Resting-State Fluctuations , 1998, NeuroImage.

[26]  E. Bullmore,et al.  The structural and functional mechanisms of motor recovery: complementary use of diffusion tensor and functional magnetic resonance imaging in a traumatic injury of the internal capsule , 1998, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[27]  C. Büchel,et al.  Dynamic changes in effective connectivity characterized by variable parameter regression and kalman filtering , 1998, Human brain mapping.

[28]  D G Norris,et al.  GRASE imaging at 3 Tesla with template interactive phase–encoding , 1998, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[29]  M. Symms,et al.  Anisotropy of Water Diffusion in Corona Radiata and Cerebral Peduncle in Patients with Hemiparesis , 1999, NeuroImage.

[30]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Abnormal Cingulate Modulation of Fronto-Temporal Connectivity in Schizophrenia , 1999, NeuroImage.

[31]  A. D. de Crespigny,et al.  Compromised white matter tract integrity in schizophrenia inferred from diffusion tensor imaging. , 1999, Archives of general psychiatry.

[32]  S C Williams,et al.  Non‐invasive assessment of axonal fiber connectivity in the human brain via diffusion tensor MRI , 1999, Magnetic resonance in medicine.

[33]  D. Tuch.  High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging of the Human Brain , 1999 .

[34]  P. V. van Zijl,et al.  Three‐dimensional tracking of axonal projections in the brain by magnetic resonance imaging , 1999, Annals of neurology.

[35]  M. Raichle,et al.  Tracking neuronal fiber pathways in the living human brain. , 1999, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[36]  R. Poldrack,et al.  Microstructure of Temporo-Parietal White Matter as a Basis for Reading Ability Evidence from Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging , 2000, Neuron.

[37]  V. Wedeen,et al.  Mapping fiber orientation spectra in cerebral white matter with Fourier-transform diffusion MRI , 2000 .

[38]  M. Koch,et al.  An assessment of eddy current sensitivity and correction in single-shot diffusion-weighted imaging. , 2000, Physics in medicine and biology.

[39]  C. Büchel,et al.  Estimation of anatomical connectivity from diffusion tensor data , 2001, NeuroImage.

[40]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical recipes in C , 2002 .