2018 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Local White Matter Architecture Defines Functional Brain Dynamics Yo Joong Choe* Sivaraman Balakrishnan Aarti Singh Kakao Dept. of Statistics and Data Science Machine Learning Dept. Seongnam-si, South Korea Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University
[email protected] Pittsburgh, PA, USA Pittsburgh, PA, USA
[email protected] [email protected] Jean M. Vettel Timothy Verstynen U.S. Army Research Laboratory Dept. of Psychology and CNBC Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, USA Carnegie Mellon University
[email protected] Pittsburgh, PA, USA
[email protected] Abstract—Large bundles of myelinated axons, called white the integrity of the myelin sheath is critical for synchroniz- matter, anatomically connect disparate brain regions together ing information transmission between distal brain areas [2], and compose the structural core of the human connectome. We fostering the ability of these networks to adapt over time recently proposed a method of measuring the local integrity along the length of each white matter fascicle, termed the local [4]. Thus, variability in the myelin sheath, as well as other connectome [1]. If communication efficiency is fundamentally cellular support mechanisms, would contribute to variability constrained by the integrity along the entire length of a white in functional coherence across the circuit. matter bundle [2], then variability in the functional dynamics To study the integrity of structural connectivity, we recently of brain networks should be associated with variability in the introduced the concept of the local connectome. This is local connectome. We test this prediction using two statistical ap- proaches that are capable of handling the high dimensionality of defined as the pattern of fiber systems (i.e., number of fibers, data.