Eneko Uruñuela¹, Clara Sava-Segal², Megan Leung², Emily S Finn², and César Caballero-Gaudes^1
1Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia - San Sebastián, Spain, ²Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, United States

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI, naturalistic paradigms

Collecting fMRI data during naturalistic paradigms has drawn considerable attention in human neuroscience as a way to investigate brain function in ecologically valid conditions. We introduce a novel method (multi-subject paradigm free mapping) to decipher BOLD events in a temporally agnostic manner, and explore concordant group activations and individual idiosyncrasies. Besides, it can operate at the fastest temporal and spatial resolutions of the data. We validate it on simulated and real naturalistic fMRI data, revealing events that track expected features of the stimulus. Overall, this technique substantially increases sensitivity in linking moment-to-moment brain activity to its underlying cause(s).

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Nanfang Pan^1,2, Kun Qin^1,2, Song Wang¹, and Qiyong Gong^1
1Department of Radiology, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, ²Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati, CINCINNATI, OH, United States

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, COVID-19

In the investigation of mental health issues following the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, we used the pre-COVID neuroimaging data to predict the severity of negative affect during the pandemic in a general population. Notably, covariation patterns of mode stress and mode anxiety were identified, and the brain DAN network plays a critical role in both modes. Based on individualized patterns, we may identify individuals who confer high vulnerability to pandemic-induced stress or anxiety symptoms. Our findings may facilitate the understanding of neural correlates underlying pandemic-induced negative affect, and the susceptibility neuromarkers may serve as targets for early prevention and psychological intervention.

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Roberta Maria Lorenzi¹, Gokce Korkmaz¹, Adnan Alahmadi², Letizia Casiraghi³, Anita Monteverdi⁴, Egidio D'Angelo^1,4, Fulvia Palesi¹, and Claudia A.M. Gandini Wheeler Kingshott^1,4,5
1Department of Brain and Behavioral sciences, Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy, ²Department of Diagnostic Radiology, College of Applied medical sciences, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ³Department of Mental Health and Dependence, ASST, Pavia, Italy, ⁴Brain Connectivity Center, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ⁵Department of Neuroinflammation, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, NMR Research Unit, Queen Square Multiple Sclerosis Centre, London, United Kingdom

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI (task based), Cerebellum

The hemodynamic response to neuronal stimuli can be both linear and nonlinear with the applied grip-force of a “squeeze-ball” task, controlled by a visual cue. Dynamic Causal Modelling was applied here to understand the causal effective between-region connectivity shaping the hemodynamic response recorded by functional-MRI. Effective connectivity resulted non-symmetric, with strong excitation from visual to motor areas. Results indicated primary visual cortex linear modulation of the cerebellar response, which exerted nonlinear influence on cortical motor planning, suggesting activation hierarchy in the motor circuit with prominent cerebellar role. This result may have important implications for understanding pathological changes affecting neural mechanisms.

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Keywords: Brain Connectivity, Neuroscience

By combining hyperscan fMRI (hfMRI) and the facial action coding system (FACS), we introduce a new brain-behavior interaction analysis that can identify the underlying brain networks for perception and expression for different emotions during eye contact. It consists of three steps. 1) The affective facial muscle movements are encoded by facial action units (FAU) using FACS. 2) The specific emotional FAUs subserve the regressors for the univariant analysis on hfMRI data. 3) The brains’ activation maps are transformed into brain networks by multivariant analysis.  It provides an approach to quantify affective interaction and emotional states.

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Keywords: Brain Connectivity, Brain

We demonstrate the feasibility of simultaneously acquiring submillimeter and subsecond functional images to examine the temporal evolution of task-dependent modulations across cortical depths elicited by socially relevant  stimuli such as faces at the single subject level. We achieved this using NORDIC denoising.  Our results highlight the complexity of laminar fMRI results in humans which can be better resolved by high spatiotemporal recordings. We suggest that, when studied with sufficient, sub-second temporal resolution, depth-dependent fMRI has the potential to address laminar communication within and across areas, which is crucial to understanding the complexity of human hierarchal organization at the mesoscale level.

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Kuan Han¹, Minkyu Choi¹, Xiaokai Wang¹, Amaya Murguia¹, and Zhongming Liu^1
1University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI (resting state)

We describe a generalizable, modular and explainable model for individualized representation learning of resting-state fMRI. The model consists of a “deep” base which learns representations that are unique to each individual brain through self-supervised learning, and “shallow” adds-on which are trained with supervised learning for different tasks of behavior prediction. The model is scalable to allow some add-on modules to be trainable without affecting others, and is explainable to identify brain structures responsible for individualized behavioral prediction.

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Patricia Figueiredo¹, Inês Esteves¹, Ana Fouto¹, Amparo Ruiz-Tagle¹, Gina Caetano¹, and César Caballero-Gaudes^2
1Institute for Systems and Robotics - Lisboa and Department of Bioengineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Lisboa, Portugal, ²Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia - San Sebastián, Spain

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI (resting state)

fMRI studies have shown that the large-scale organization of resting-state functional brain networks can be largely explained by a small fraction of events exhibiting high cofluctuation amplitude. However, their neurobiological relevance remains unclear. We investigated the electrophysiological origins of high cofluctuation amplitude BOLD events using concurrent EEG-fMRI data acquired from humans. We found that high amplitude cofluctuations were associated with higher delta power and lower alpha power. This association was specifically observed when considering delays ~6s between EEG and BOLD signals, supporting its neurovascular origin and suggesting that high cofluctuation BOLD events have a neurophysiological origin.

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Keywords: Brain Connectivity, Diffusion/other diffusion imaging techniques

Tractography is a method to reconstruct white matter microstructure from DWI information and connectomics maps this reconstruction to a graph representation. We compute modularity, assortativity, global efficiency, and average betweenness centrality on this graph. We model changes in these measures with age and sex using DWI for healthy patients from two sites. Data from different sites requires harmonization to remove site-effects. We compare performances of ComBat and LinearRISH harmonization techniques at reducing CoV and removing confounding site-effects from associated linear models. We find that ComBat is effective at both and using LinearRISH in addition acts synergistically at harmonizing site differences.

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Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI (resting state), deep brain stimulation, memory, cognition

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been a well-established treatment for cognitive dysfunction. However, cognitive dysfunctions were demonstrated to be associated with the metabolic syndrome. Nucleus accumbens (NAc) in the dopaminergic pathway is associated with glucose metabolism, considered to be a promising DBS targeted region to be investigated. Resting-state functional MRI, behavioral test, bioenergetic analysis and electron microscopy were applied in this study. We found increased functional connectivity, enhancement in cognitive behavior, increased energy metabolism and mitochondrial biomass after NAc-DBS.

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Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI

In this study, the response of the amygdala to 3D orientation selective deep brain stimulation of the infralimbic cortex (IL) was followed using MB-SWIFT fMRI. The aims were to investigate how the fMRI response of the amygdala changes whilst changing the stimulation angle in the IL, and to detect the effects in resting-state functional connectivity when sustained 130 Hz stimulation of the IL at the most effective stimulation angle is used. The fMRI response of the amygdala showed dependence on the stimulation angle and inter-animal variation, which can be exploited for optimizing the stimulation effects.

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Zilu Ma^1,2, Qingqing Zhang¹, Wenyu Tu³, and Nanyin Zhang^1,3
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States, ²National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, MD, United States, ³The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States

Keywords: Multimodal, fMRI (resting state), Awake, Calcium fiber photometry, BOLD

Understanding the relationships between neuronal, vascular and Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals is essential for the appropriate interpretation of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results in relation to the corresponding neuronal activity. In this study, we utilized multimodal imaging technique that concurrently measures BOLD fMRI and calcium-based fiber photometry signal to examine the relationship between BOLD and neural spiking activity in awake rats. Our results demonstrated significant correspondence between the BOLD and calcium signals at both evoked and resting state, suggesting critical role of spiking activity in the neural mechanism underlying BOLD signal. 

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Hyun Seok Moon^1,2,3, Thanh Tan Vo^1,2,3, and Seong-Gi Kim^1,2,3
1Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research, Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Suwon, Korea, Republic of, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea, Republic of, ³Department of Intelligent Precision Healthcare Convergence, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea, Republic of

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI

Mapping resting-state effective connectivity by cortical optogenetic activation of inhibitory neurons in mice

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Keywords: Brain Connectivity, fMRI, preclinical, functional connectivity, neural oscillations, DMN

The default mode network (DMN) is a distributed functional system of the human brain widely studied with fMRI due to its involvement in advanced cognitive processes and its dysregulation in a variety of brain disorders. Causal perturbations of this network in physiologically accessible species are critically required to probe its circuit organization and the underpinnings of its (dys)function. Here we show that tapered fiber optogenetic technology enables the reliable stimulation of key DMN nodes in a frequency dependent fashion, overcoming the limitations of traditional optogenetic approaches.

Teng Ma^1,2,3, Xunda Wang^1,2, Linshan Xie^1,2, Junjian Wen^1,2, Pit Shan Chong⁴, Peng Cao³, Lee Wei Lim⁴, Ed X. Wu^1,2,4, and Alex T. L. Leong^1,2
1Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China, ²Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China, ³Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China, ⁴School of Biomedical Sciences, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, Neuroscience

Olfactory adaptation due to repeated odor cues has been studied extensively by fMRI or electrophysiology studies in several primary olfactory regions (i.e., anterior olfactory nucleus, AON, and piriform cortex, Pir). However, the modulatory role of other primary olfactory regions (e.g., amygdala and entorhinal cortex) and their integrations with high-order olfactory regions during olfactory adaptation is likely underestimated due to the documented weak and unstable responses at regions beyond AON and Pir with conventional presentation of odor stimuli. Here, we deployed an optogenetic fMRI approach to improve sensitivity in detecting olfactory responses and examine their adaptation at the systems level.

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Muditha Bandara Rathnayaka¹, Rui Yang¹, Yeison Rodriguez¹, Janaka Wansapura¹, and Nan Li¹
Circadian influence on brain connectivity revealed by resting-state fMRI in awake mice

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Muditha Bandara Rathnayaka¹, Rui Yang¹, Yeison Rodriguez¹, Janaka Wansapura¹, and Nan Li^1
1Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States

Keywords: Brain Connectivity, f