Investigating robust associations between functional connectivity based on graph theory and general intelligence

Abstract

Previous research investigating relations between general intelligence and graph-theoretical properties of the brain’s intrinsic functional network has yielded contradictory results. A promising approach to tackle such mixed findings is multi-center analysis. For this study, we analyzed data from four independent data sets (total N > 2000) to identify robust associations amongst samples between g factor scores and global as well as node-specific graph metrics. On the global level, g showed no significant associations with global efficiency or small-world propensity in any sample, but significant positive associations with global clustering coefficient in two samples. On the node-specific level, elastic-net regressions for nodal efficiency and local clustering yielded no brain areas that exhibited consistent associations amongst data sets. Using the areas identified via elastic-net regression in one sample to predict g in other samples was not successful for local clustering and only led to one significant, one-way prediction across data sets for nodal efficiency. Thus, using conventional graph theoretical measures based on resting-state imaging did not result in replicable associations between functional connectivity and general intelligence.