Zhou Dongli, Thompson Wesley K, Siegle Greg
Department of Statistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Neuroimage. 2009 Oct 1;47(4):1590-607. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.05.089. Epub 2009 Jun 8.
The term "functional connectivity" is used to denote correlations in activation among spatially-distinct brain regions, either in a resting state or when processing external stimuli. Functional connectivity has been extensively evaluated with several functional neuroimaging methods, particularly PET and fMRI. Yet these relationships have been quantified using very different measures and the extent to which they index the same constructs is unclear. We have implemented a variety of these functional connectivity measures in a new freely available MATLAB toolbox. These measures are categorized into two groups: whole time-series and trial-based approaches. We evaluate these measures via simulations with different patterns of functional connectivity and provide recommendations for their use. We also apply these measures to a previously published fMRI data set (Siegle, G.J., Thompson, W., Carter, C.S., Steinhauer, S.R., Thase, M.E., 2007. Increased amygdala and decreased dorsolateral prefrontal BOLD responses in unipolar depression: related and independent features. Biol. Psychiatry 610 (2), 198-209) in which activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was evaluated in 32 control subjects during a digit sorting task. Though all implemented measures demonstrate functional connectivity between dACC and DLPFC activity during event-related tasks, different participants appeared to display qualitatively different relationships.
术语“功能连接性”用于表示在静息状态或处理外部刺激时，空间上不同的脑区之间激活的相关性。功能连接性已通过多种功能神经成像方法进行了广泛评估，尤其是正电子发射断层扫描（PET）和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）。然而，这些关系是使用非常不同的测量方法进行量化的，而且它们在多大程度上索引相同的结构尚不清楚。我们在一个新的免费MATLAB工具箱中实现了多种这些功能连接性测量方法。这些测量方法分为两组：全时间序列和基于试验的方法。我们通过对不同功能连接模式的模拟来评估这些测量方法，并为其使用提供建议。我们还将这些测量方法应用于先前发表的fMRI数据集（Siegle, G.J., Thompson, W., Carter, C.S., Steinhauer, S.R., Thase, M.E., 2007. 单相抑郁症中杏仁核激活增加和背外侧前额叶BOLD反应降低：相关和独立特征。《生物精神病学》610 (2), 198 - 209），其中在32名对照受试者进行数字分类任务期间，评估了背侧前扣带回皮质（dACC）和背外侧前额叶皮质（DLPFC）的活动。尽管所有实施的测量方法都显示了在事件相关任务期间dACC和DLPFC活动之间的功能连接性，但不同参与者似乎表现出质的不同关系。
