The structural connectome constrains fast brain dynamics.

Pierpaolo Sorrentino,Viktor Jirsa,Giuseppe Sorrentino,Mario Quarantelli,Caio Seguin,Simona Bonavita,Marianna Liparoti,Emahnuel Troisi Lopez,Andrew Zalesky,Rosaria Rucco

doi:10.7554/elife.67400

Abstract

Brain activity during rest displays complex, rapidly evolving patterns in space and time. Structural connections comprising the human connectome are hypothesized to impose constraints on the dynamics of this activity. Here, we use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to quantify the extent to which fast neural dynamics in the human brain are constrained by structural connections inferred from diffusion MRI tractography. We characterize the spatio-temporal unfolding of whole-brain activity at the millisecond scale from source-reconstructed MEG data, estimating the probability that any two brain regions will significantly deviate from baseline activity in consecutive time epochs. We find that the structural connectome relates to, and likely affects, the rapid spreading of neuronal avalanches, evidenced by a significant association between these transition probabilities and structural connectivity strengths (r = 0.37, p<0.0001). This finding opens new avenues to study the relationship between brain structure and neural dynamics.

Highlights

The structural scaffolding of the human connectome [1] constrains the unfolding of large-scale coordinated neural activity towards a restricted functional repertoire [2]
11.58) using diffusion MRI tractography and regions defined based on the Automated Anatomical
Interregional streamline counts derived from whole-brain deterministic tractography quantified the strength of structural connectivity between pairs of regions

Summary

Introduction

The structural scaffolding of the human connectome [1] constrains the unfolding of large-scale coordinated neural activity towards a restricted functional repertoire [2]. In healthy young adults, we exploit the high temporal resolution of resting-state magnetoencephalography (MEG) data to study the spatial spread of perturbations of local activations representative of neuronal avalanches. We find that avalanche spread is significantly more likely between pairs of grey matter regions that are structurally connected, as inferred from diffusion MRI tractography. This result provides cross-modal empirical evidence suggesting that connectome topology constrains fast-scale transmission of neural information, linking brain structure to brain dynamics

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