Human brain networks function in connectome-specific harmonic waves

By S. Atasoy, I. Donnelly, Joel Pearson. Nature Communications, 2016

404 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A key characteristic of human brain activity is coherent, spatially distributed oscillations forming behaviour-dependent brain networks. However, a fundamental principle underlying these networks remains unknown. Here we report that functional networks of the human brain are predicted by harmonic patterns, ubiquitous throughout nature, steered by the anatomy of the human cerebral cortex, the human connectome. We introduce a new technique extending the Fourier basis to the human connectome. In this new frequency-specific representation of cortical activity, that we call ‘connectome harmonics’, oscillatory networks of the human brain at rest match harmonic wave patterns of certain frequencies. We demonstrate a neural mechanism behind the self-organization of connectome harmonics with a continuous neural field model of excitatory–inhibitory interactions on the connectome. Remarkably, the critical relation between the neural field patterns and the delicate excitation–inhibition balance fits the neurophysiological changes observed during the loss and recovery of consciousness. Inter-areal oscillatory synchronization is constrained by anatomical connections, yet a fundamental principle linking functional and structural connectivity is lacking. Here, Atasoy and colleagues show that harmonic patterns in structural connectome can predict dynamics of resting state networks.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/069df49c0f0e774fb8e8241d55beda00402846e2

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Citations in the corpus

Linking Structure and Function in Macroscale Brain Networks. (2020, unknown): “More recently, attention has shifted to decentralized mechanisms where signals diffuse through the network [56,57], often broadcast on multiple fronts [37,51,58,59].”
Functional connectivity dynamically evolves on multiple time-scales over a static structural connectome: Models and mechanisms (2017, methodology): “…can be interpreted from the perspective of meta-stable partial synchronization in complex networks. v. Connectome-specific harmonic waves Recently, Atasoy et al. (2016) demonstrated that the collective dynamics of human cortical activity at the macroscopic scale can be predicted by the…”
Graph Signal Processing: Overview, Challenges, and Applications (2017, unknown): “imaging (fMRI) data [174], [175], [176].”