10.25376/hra.11856048.v1
Markus D. Schirmer
Markus D.
Schirmer
Ai Wern Chung
Ai Wern
Chung
2019_CNI_SCHIRMER_CHUNG_HeatABIDE.pdf
Health Research Alliance
2020
brain
connectome
heat kernel
Autism
subnetworks
hubs
functional network
diffusion equation
Neuroscience
2020-02-14 17:44:06
Journal contribution
https://hra.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/2019_CNI_SCHIRMER_CHUNG_HeatABIDE_pdf/11856048
Autism is increasing in prevalence and is a neurodevelopmental disorder
characterised by impairments in communication skills and social
behaviour. Connectomes enable a systems-level representation of the
brain with recent interests in understanding the distributed nature of
higher order cognitive function using modules or subnetworks. By
dividing the connectome according to a central component of the brain
critical for its function (it’s hub), we investigate network
organisation in autism from hub through to peripheral subnetworks. We
complement this analysis by extracting features of energy transport
computed from heat kernels fitted with increasing time steps. This heat
kernel framework is advantageous as it can capture the energy
transported in all direct and indirect pathways between pair-wise
regions over ’time’, with features that have correspondence to
small-world properties. We apply our framework to resting-state
functional MRI connectomes from a large, publically available autism
dataset, ABIDE. We show that energy propagating through the brain over
time are different between subnetworks, and that heat kernel features
significantly differ between autism and controls. Furthermore, the hub
was functionally preserved and similar to controls, however, increasing
statistical significance between groups was found in increasingly
peripheral subnetworks. Our results support the increasing opinion of
non-hub regions playing an important role in functional organisation.
This work shows that analysing autism by subnetworks with the heat
kernel reflects the atypical activations in peripheral regions as
alterations in energy dispersion and may provide useful features towards
understanding the distributed impact of this disorder on the functional
connectome.