Abstract
The intrinsic activity of the human brain maintains its general operation at rest, and this ongoing spontaneous activity exhibits a high level of spatiotemporally correlated activity among different cortical areas, showing intrinsically organized brain functional connectivity (FC) networks. Many functional network properties of the human brain have been investigated extensively for both rest and task states, but the relationship between these two states has been rarely investigated yet and remains unclear. Comparing well-defined task-specific networks with corresponding intrinsic FC networks may reveal their relationship and improve our understanding of the brain’s operations at both rest and task states. This study investigated the relationship of the sensorimotor and visual cortical FC networks between the resting and task states. The sensorimotor task was to rub right-hand fingers, and the visual task was to open and close eyes, respectively. Our study demonstrated a general relationship of the task-evoked FC network with its corresponding intrinsic FC network, regardless of the tasks. For each task type, the study showed that (1) the intrinsic and task-evoked FC networks shared a common network and the task enhanced the coactivity within that common network compared to the intrinsic activity; (2) some areas within the intrinsic FC network were not activated by the task, and therefore, the task activated only partial but not whole of the intrinsic FC network; and (3) the task activated substantial additional areas outside the intrinsic FC network and therefore recruited more intrinsic FC networks to perform the task.
Highlights
The brain’s operations are mainly intrinsic, including the acquisition and maintenance of information for interpreting, responding to, and predicting environmental demands (Raichle, 2010)
For the seed selected in the left PSMC, for the resting state, the determined functional connectivity (FC) map demonstrated a significant correlation of the intrinsic neural activity in both left and right primary sensorimotor cortex, premotor area, supplementary motor area, parietal cortex, and the right anterior motor area of the cerebellum (Figure 2, top panel)
The group-mean analysis of the R values showed a significant R for the resting state compared to that of the task state (Figure 4, top panel, middle), demonstrating that but their neural activity for the task state was not correlated with the intrinsic neural activity of these areas with that of the seed the sensorimotor task-evoked activity
Summary
The brain’s operations are mainly intrinsic, including the acquisition and maintenance of information for interpreting, responding to, and predicting environmental demands (Raichle, 2010) This ongoing intrinsic activity, i.e., the resting-state activity measured with the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), is spontaneous but exhibits a high level of spatiotemporally correlated activity among different cortical areas, showing intrinsically organized brain functional connectivity (FC) networks and each network’s temporal coactivity at rest (Ogawa et al, 1992; Biswal et al, 1995; Raichle, 2011). Interpreting clinical resting-state fMRI data may require a better understanding the relationship of FC network between rest and task states
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