Understanding how the brain’s network architecture shapes its capacity to transition between different states
To support the diversity of human cognitive functions, such as learning, thinking, reasoning, remembering, problem solving, decision making, and attention, brain regions flexibly form and dissolve connections on the fly. How is the brain’s capacity to transition between different functional configurations shaped by brain network architecture? Andrea Luppi, working in Bratislav Misic’s lab at McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute, investigated this question using engineering principles of network control to simulate transitions between behaviourally derived brain states. They identified >100 cognitively relevant brain states in a data-driven manner, corresponding to activation patterns aggregated over 14,000 fMRI studies from a large collaborative database called NeuroSynth, and effectively mapped how brain network organization and chemoarchitecture interact to manifest these brain states. By leveraging large-scale databases of network structure, functional activation and neurotransmitter systems, the present work provides an integrative framework for the systematic exploration of the full range of possible transitions between experimentally defined brain states. This systematic approach allowed the researchers to discover the key role of the brain’s wiring diagram in supporting flexible transitions with high energetic efficiency, and how this efficiency can be disrupted by disease and restored by targeted pharmacology.
Read the full story here: https://can-acn.org/brain-star-award-winner-andrea-luppi/
View the original research article here:
Andrea I. Luppi, S. Parker Singleton, Justine Y. Hansen, Keith W. Jamison, Danilo Bzdok, Amy Kuceyeski, Richard F. Betzel & Bratislav Misic. Contributions of network structure, chemoarchitecture and diagnostic categories to transitions between cognitive topographies. Nature Biomedical Engineering 8, 1142–1161 (2024).
