Tracking spatial dynamics of functional connectivity during a task

Abstract

Functional connectivity (FC) measured from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a powerful tool to explore brain organization. Studies of the temporal dynamics of brain organization have shown a large temporal variability of the functional connectome, which may be associated with mental status transitions and/or adaptive process. Most dynamic studies, e.g. functional connectome and functional network connectivity (FNC), have focused on the macroscopic FC changes, i.e. the changes of temporal coherence across various brain network sources, nodes and/or regions of interest, where it is assumed within the network or node that the FC is static. In this paper, we develop a novel method to examine the spatial dynamics of FC, without the assumption of its intra-network stationarity. We applied our approach to fMRI data during an auditory oddball task (AOD) from twenty-two subjects, in an attempt to capture/validate the approach by evaluating whether spatial connectivity varies with task condition. The results showed that connectivity networks exhibit spatial variability over time, in addition to participating in conventional temporal dynamics, i.e. cross-network variability or dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC). Furthermore, we studied the relationship of spatial dynamic in FC to cognitive processes, by performing a cluster analysis to evaluate an individual's functional correspondence towards the ‘target’ (oddball) detection from AOD task, and extracting cognitive task correspondence states as well as their dynamic FC spatial maps segregated by such states. We found a clear trend in different task-guided states, particularly, a prominent reduction of task stimulus synchrony state along with strong anticorrelation between default mode network (DMN) and cognitive attentional networks. We also observed an increasing occurrence of the task desynchrony state which showed an absence of DMN anticorrelation. The results highlight the impact of a well-studied cognitive task on the observed spatial dynamic structure. We also showed that the FC spatial dynamic pattern from our method largely corresponds to macroscopic dFNC patterns, but with more details and specifications over space, meanwhile the connectivity within the source itself provides novel information and varies over time. Overall, we demonstrate clear evidence of the presence of the (usually ignored) spatial dynamics of connectivity, its links to the task and implications of cognition/mental status.