Health Research Alliance
Browse
2019_CNI_SCHIRMER_CHUNG_HeatABIDE.pdf (1.07 MB)

2019_CNI_SCHIRMER_CHUNG_HeatABIDE.pdf

Download (1.07 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2020-02-14, 17:44 authored by Markus D. Schirmer, Ai Wern Chung
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.

History

Grant ID

19POST34380005

Usage metrics

    American Heart Association

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC