Comparison of brain connectomes using geodesic distance on manifold:a twin study

TL;DR

This study introduces a novel geodesic distance-based method to compare brain connectomes from fMRI data, revealing higher network similarity in monozygotic twins, especially in task-relevant networks.

Contribution

The paper presents a new approach using geodesic distance on graph Laplacians to assess functional network similarity in twin fMRI data.

Findings

Monozygotic twins show more similar brain networks than dizygotic twins.

Network similarity is higher in task-relevant networks for monozygotic twins.

The method effectively differentiates between twin types based on brain connectivity.

Abstract

fMRI is a unique non-invasive approach for understanding the functional organization of the human brain, and task-based fMRI promotes identification of functionally relevant brain regions associated with a given task. Here, we use fMRI (using the Poffenberger Paradigm) data collected in mono- and dizygotic twin pairs to propose a novel approach for assessing similarity in functional networks. In particular, we compared network similarity between pairs of twins in task-relevant and task-orthogonal networks. The proposed method measures the similarity between functional networks using a geodesic distance between graph Laplacians. With method we show that networks are more similar in monozygotic twins compared to dizygotic twins. Furthermore, the similarity in monozygotic twins is higher for task-relevant, than task-orthogonal networks.