Published in

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, Network Neuroscience, 4(4), p. 980-1006, 2020

DOI: 10.1162/netn_a_00161

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Network communication models improve the behavioral and functional predictive utility of the human structural connectome

Journal article published in 2020 by Caio Seguin ORCID, Ye Tian, Andrew Zalesky
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Orange circle
Preprint: archiving restricted
Orange circle
Postprint: archiving restricted
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The connectome provides the structural substrate facilitating communication between brain regions. We aimed to establish whether accounting for polysynaptic communication in structural connectomes would improve prediction of interindividual variation in behavior as well as increase structure-function coupling strength. Connectomes were mapped for 889 healthy adults participating in the Human Connectome Project. To account for polysynaptic signaling, connectomes were transformed into communication matrices for each of 15 different network communication models. Communication matrices were (a) used to perform predictions of five data-driven behavioral dimensions and (b) correlated to resting-state functional connectivity (FC). While FC was the most accurate predictor of behavior, communication models, in particular communicability and navigation, improved the performance of structural connectomes. Communication also strengthened structure-function coupling, with the navigation and shortest paths models leading to 35–65% increases in association strength with FC. We combined behavioral and functional results into a single ranking that provides insight into which communication models may more faithfully recapitulate underlying neural signaling patterns. Comparing results across multiple connectome mapping pipelines suggested that modeling polysynaptic communication is particularly beneficial in sparse high-resolution connectomes. We conclude that network communication models can augment the functional and behavioral predictive utility of the human structural connectome.