Multi-scale community organization of the human structural connectome and its relationship with resting-state functional connectivity

Abstract

The human connectome has been widely studied over the past decade. A principal finding is that it can be decomposed into communities of densely interconnected brain regions. Past studies have often used single-scale modularity measures in order to infer the connectome's community structure, possibly overlooking interesting structure at other organizational scales. In this report, we used the partition stability framework, which defines communities in terms of a Markov process (random walk), to infer the connectome's multi-scale community structure. Comparing the community structure to observed resting-state functional connectivity revealed communities across a broad range of scales that were closely related to functional connectivity. This result suggests a mapping between communities in structural networks, models of influence-spreading and diffusion, and brain function. It further suggests that the spread of influence among brain regions may not be limited to a single characteristic scale. © 2014, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.