B1490
Title: Persistent homology-based functional connectivity measures for cognitive aging
Authors: Seonjoo Lee - Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute (United States) [presenting]
Abstract: Brain-segregation attributes in resting-state functional networks have been widely investigated to understand cognition and cognitive ageing using various approaches, such as average connectivity within and between networks and brain system segregation. While these approaches have assumed that resting-state functional networks operate in a modular structure, a complementary perspective assumes that a core-periphery or rich club structure accounts for brain functions where the hubs are tightly interconnected to each other to allow for integrated processing. An alternative is developed to standard functional connectivity by quantifying the pattern of information during the integrated processing. It also investigates whether PH-based functional connectivity explains cognitive performance and compares the amount of variability in explaining cognitive performance for three sets of independent variables: (1) PH-based functional connectivity, (2) graph theory-based measures, and (3) BSS. Resting-state functional connectivity data were extracted from 279 healthy participants. The results first highlight the pattern of brain-information flow over whole brain regions (i.e., integrated processing) accounts for more variance of cognitive abilities than other methods. The results also show that fluid reasoning and vocabulary performance significantly decrease as the strength of the additional information flow on functional connectivity with the shortest path increases.
