Introduction to Research Topic – Brain Connectivity Analysis: Investigating Brain Disorders. Part 2: Original Research Articles

Barry Horwitz,Silvina G. Horovitz

doi:10.3389/fnsys.2012.00004

Abstract

Although the review articles discussed in part 1 (Introduction to research topic – Brain connectivity analysis: investigating brain disorders. Part 1: the review articles) give a nice overview of the scope of brain connectivity analysis as applied to brain disorders, the original research papers included in this collection enable the reader to see how one actually goes about employing such analyses on real data sets. In these articles we see the specific steps that are necessary to perform each particular connectivity analysis. We believe that these articles will be especially useful as guides for other researchers attempting brain connectivity analyses.

Highlights

Several articles focus on normal brain function, but these papers are included because the subject groups that are investigated experience changing patterns of brain connectivity, and as such, share some of the conceptual difficulties that occur when studying brain disorders. Karunanayaka et al (2011) evaluate the developmental trajectories of fMRI effective connectivity using linear structural equation modeling (SEM) during the verb-generate task in a large group of children whose ages ranged between 5 and 18 years. Allen et al (2011) present an independent component analysis (ICA) of the effects of healthy aging (12–71 years) and gender on resting state fMRI networks
Turken and Dronkers (2011) used both DTI tractography and resting state fMRI functional connectivity to investigate in healthy subjects the structural and functional connectivity of white matter pathways between left hemisphere brain regions critical for language comprehension
By combining brain–behavior and functional connectivity analyses, they sought to determine whether the compensatory brain changes they found in the patients represented functional reorganization or altered functional engagement

Summary

Introduction

Several articles focus on normal brain function, but these papers are included because the subject groups that are investigated experience changing patterns of brain connectivity, and as such, share some of the conceptual difficulties that occur when studying brain disorders. Karunanayaka et al (2011) evaluate the developmental trajectories of fMRI effective connectivity using linear structural equation modeling (SEM) during the verb-generate task in a large group of children whose ages ranged between 5 and 18 years. Allen et al (2011) present an independent component analysis (ICA) of the effects of healthy aging (12–71 years) and gender on resting state fMRI networks. Several articles focus on normal brain function, but these papers are included because the subject groups that are investigated experience changing patterns of brain connectivity, and as such, share some of the conceptual difficulties that occur when studying brain disorders. Karunanayaka et al (2011) evaluate the developmental trajectories of fMRI effective connectivity using linear structural equation modeling (SEM) during the verb-generate task in a large group of children whose ages ranged between 5 and 18 years.

Results

Conclusion