Structural mediation of human brain activity revealed by white-matter interpolation of fMRI

TL;DR

This study introduces a method to interpolate fMRI signals into white matter, revealing structural pathways that mediate functional connectivity, especially within the default mode network, and elucidating mechanisms of task-related brain activity switching.

Contribution

It presents a novel white matter interpolation technique that links structural brain anatomy with functional activity patterns, enhancing understanding of brain network organization.

Findings

White matter structures mediate functional signal flow.

Enhanced visualization of the default mode network subcomponents.

Distinct structure-function patterns during different tasks.

Abstract

Anatomy of the human brain constrains the formation of large-scale functional networks. Here, given measured brain activity in gray matter, we interpolate these functional signals into the white matter on a structurally-informed high-resolution voxel-level brain grid. The interpolated volumes reflect the underlying anatomical information, revealing white matter structures that mediate functional signal flow between temporally coherent gray matter regions. Functional connectivity analyses of the interpolated volumes reveal an enriched picture of the default mode network (DMN) and its subcomponents, including how white matter bundles support their formation, thus transcending currently known spatial patterns that are limited within the gray matter only. These subcomponents have distinct structure-function patterns, each of which are differentially recruited during tasks, demonstrating plausible structural mechanisms for functional switching between task-positive and -negative components. This work opens new avenues for integration of brain structure and function and demonstrates how global patterns of activity arise from a collective interplay of signal propagation along different white matter pathways.