Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Neuroimage. 2010 Mar;50(1):81-98. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.011. Epub 2009 Dec 16.
Most studies of resting-state functional connectivity using fMRI employ methods that assume temporal stationarity, such as correlation and data-driven decompositions computed across the duration of the scan. However, evidence from both task-based fMRI studies and animal electrophysiology suggests that functional connectivity may exhibit dynamic changes within time scales of seconds to minutes. In the present study, we investigated the dynamic behavior of resting-state connectivity across the course of a single scan, performing a time-frequency coherence analysis based on the wavelet transform. We focused on the connectivity of the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), a primary node of the default-mode network, examining its relationship with both the "anticorrelated" ("task-positive") network as well as other nodes of the default-mode network. It was observed that coherence and phase between the PCC and the anticorrelated network was variable in time and frequency, and statistical testing based on Monte Carlo simulations revealed the presence of significant scale-dependent temporal variability. In addition, a sliding-window correlation procedure identified other regions across the brain that exhibited variable connectivity with the PCC across the scan, which included areas previously implicated in attention and salience processing. Although it is unclear whether the observed coherence and phase variability can be attributed to residual noise or modulation of cognitive state, the present results illustrate that resting-state functional connectivity is not static, and it may therefore prove valuable to consider measures of variability, in addition to average quantities, when characterizing resting-state networks.
大多数使用 fMRI 进行静息态功能连接研究的方法都假设时间稳定性,例如在扫描持续时间内计算的相关性和数据驱动的分解。然而,来自基于任务的 fMRI 研究和动物电生理学的证据表明,功能连接可能在秒到分钟的时间尺度内表现出动态变化。在本研究中,我们在单个扫描过程中研究了静息态连接的动态行为,通过基于小波变换的数据进行了时频相干性分析。我们专注于后扣带皮层(PCC)的连接,这是默认模式网络的主要节点,研究了它与“负相关”(“任务正相关”)网络以及默认模式网络的其他节点的关系。结果表明,PCC 与负相关网络之间的相干性和相位随时间和频率而变化,基于蒙特卡罗模拟的统计检验揭示了存在显著的依赖于尺度的时间变异性。此外,滑动窗口相关程序确定了大脑中其他区域,这些区域在扫描过程中与 PCC 表现出可变的连接,其中包括先前涉及注意力和突显处理的区域。尽管尚不清楚观察到的相干性和相位变化是否可以归因于残余噪声或认知状态的调制,但目前的结果表明静息态功能连接不是静态的,因此在描述静息态网络时,除了平均数量外,考虑变异性度量可能会很有价值。