Task-related effective connectivity reveals that the cortical rich club gates cortex-wide communication

Senden, Mario; van den Heuvel, Martijn; Gilson, Matthieu; Deco, Gustavo; Reuter, Niels; Goebel, Rainer

doi:10.1101/185603

Journal Article

FZJ-2017-08291

Task-related effective connectivity reveals that the cortical rich club gates cortex-wide communication

Senden, M. (Corresponding author) ; Reuter, N.FZJ* ; van den Heuvel, M. ; Goebel, R. ; Deco, G. ; Gilson, M.

2018
Wiley-Liss New York, NY

Human brain mapping 39(3), 1246-1262 (2018) [10.1101/185603]

This record in other databases:

Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.1101/185603

Abstract: Higher cognition may require the globally coordinated integration of specialized brain regions into functional networks. A collection of cortical hubs - referred to as the rich club - has been hypothesized to support task-specific functional integration. In the present paper, we use a whole-cortex model to estimate directed interactions between 68 cortical regions from fMRI activity for four different tasks (reflecting different cognitive domains) and resting state. We analyze the state-dependent input and output effective connectivity of the rich club and relate these to whole-cortex dynamics and network reconfigurations. We find that the cortical rich club exhibits an increase in outgoing effective connectivity during task performance as compared to rest while incoming connectivity remains constant. Increased outgoing connectivity targets a sparse set of peripheral regions with specific regions strongly overlapping between tasks. At the same time, community detection analyses reveal massive reorganizations of interactions among peripheral regions, including those serving as target of increased rich cub output. This suggests that while peripheral regions can play a role in several tasks, their interplay might nonetheless be task-specific. Furthermore, we observe that whole-cortex dynamics are faster during task as compared to rest. The decoupling effects usually accompanying faster dynamics appear to be counteracted by the increased rich club outgoing effective connectivity. Together our findings speak to a gating mechanism of the rich club that supports fast-paced information exchange among relevant peripheral regions in a task-specific and goal-directed fashion, while constantly listening to the whole network.

Classification: