title: Analytical Operations Relate Structural and Functional Connectivity in the Brain.
abstract: Resting-state large-scale brain models vary in the amount of biological elements they incorporate and in the way they are being tested. One might expect that the more realistic the model is, the closer it should reproduce real functional data. It has been shown, instead, that when linear correlation across long BOLD fMRI time-series is used as a measure for functional connectivity (FC) to compare simulated and real data, a simple model performs just as well, or even better, than more sophisticated ones. The model in question is a simple linear model, which considers the physiological noise that is pervasively present in our brain while it diffuses across the white-matter connections, that is structural connectivity (SC). We deeply investigate this linear model, providing an analytical solution to straightforwardly compute FC from SC without the need of computationally costly simulations of time-series. We provide a few examples how this analytical solution could be used to perform a fast and detailed parameter exploration or to investigate resting-state non-stationarities. Most importantly, by inverting the analytical solution, we propose a method to retrieve information on the anatomical structure directly from functional data. This simple method can be used to complement or guide DTI/DSI and tractography results, especially for a better assessment of inter-hemispheric connections, or to provide an estimate of SC when only functional data are available.
authors.affiliation: Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes, Aix-Marseille Université Faculté de Médecine, Marseille, France.|INSERM UMR 1106, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Maria Luisa
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Saggio
authors.affiliation: Minerva Research Group BrainModes, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.|Dept. Neurology, Charité - University Medicine, Berlin, Germany.|Bernstein Focus State Dependencies of Learning & Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany.|Berlin School of Mind and Brain & Mind and Brain Institute, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Petra
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ritter
authors.affiliation: Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes, Aix-Marseille Université Faculté de Médecine, Marseille, France.|INSERM UMR 1106, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Viktor K
authors.initials: VK
authors.lastname: Jirsa
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology