A stylised view on structural and functional connectivity in dynamical processes in networks

TL;DR

This paper classifies functional connectivity into co-activity and sequential activity, analyzing their relationships with structural connectivity across various dynamical models and application domains to better understand complex network behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual framework distinguishing two classes of functional connectivity and applies this to diverse dynamical processes and real-world systems.

Findings

Two classes of functional connectivity identified: co-activity and sequential activity.

SC/FC correlations vary across excitation, oscillators, and chaotic models.

Framework applied to neuroscience, ecology, geomorphology, and social systems.

Abstract

The relationship of network structure and dynamics is one of most extensively investigated problems in the theory of complex systems of the last years. Understanding this relationship is of relevance to a range of disciplines -- from Neuroscience to Geomorphology. A major strategy of investigating this relationship is the quantitative comparison of a representation of network architecture (structural connectivity) with a (network) representation of the dynamics (functional connectivity). Analysing such SC/FC relationships has over the past years contributed substantially to our understanding of the functional role of network properties, such as modularity, hierarchical organization, hubs and cycles. Here, we show that one can distinguish two classes of functional connectivity -- one based on simultaneous activity (co-activity) of nodes the other based on sequential activity of nodes. We delineate these two classes in different categories of dynamical processes -- excitations, regular and chaotic oscillators -- and provide examples for SC/FC correlations of both classes in each of these models. We expand the theoretical view of the SC/FC relationships, with conceptual instances of the SC and the two classes of FC for various application scenarios in Geomorphology, Freshwater Ecology, Systems Biology, Neuroscience and Social-Ecological Systems. Seeing the organization of a dynamical processes in a network either as governed by co-activity or by sequential activity allows us to bring some order in the myriad of observations relating structure and function of complex networks.