Group-wise optimization of common brain landmarks with joint structural and functional regulations

Abstract

An unrelenting human quest regarding the brain science is: what is the intrinsic relationship between the brain's structural and functional architectures, which partly defines what we are and who we are. Recent studies suggest that each brain's cytoarchitectonic region has a unique set of extrinsic inputs and outputs, named as "connectional fingerprint", which largely determines the functions that each brain area performs. However, their explicit connections are largely unknown. For example, in what extent they are inclined to be coherent with each other and otherwise they will intend to show more heterogeneity? In this work, based on a widely used brain structural atlas which represents the most consistent structural connectome across different populations, we proposed a novel group-wise optimization framework to computationally model the functional homogeneity behind them. The optimization procedure is conducted under the joint structural and functional regulations and therefore the achieved common brain landmarks reflect the consistency of brain structure and function simultaneously. The Human Connectome Project (HCP) Q1 dataset, which includes 68 subjects with high quality imaging data, was used as test bed and the results imply that there exists extraordinary accordance between brain structural and functional architectures. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.