2019/10/18 by Maria Giulia Preti, Dimitri Van De Ville · 2 citations
Neuroscience · Medicine · #Functional Brain Connectivity Studies #Neural dynamics and brain function #Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12765-7
openalex publication_date 2019/10/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The brain is an assembly of neuronal populations interconnected by structural pathways. Brain activity is expressed on and constrained by this substrate. Therefore, statistical dependencies between functional signals in directly connected areas can be expected higher. However, the degree to which brain function is bound by the underlying wiring diagram remains a complex question that has been only partially answered. Here, we introduce the structural-decoupling index to quantify the coupling strength between structure and function, and we reveal a macroscale gradient from brain regions more strongly coupled, to regions more strongly decoupled, than expected by realistic surrogate data. This gradient spans behavioral domains from lower-level sensory function to high-level cognitive ones and shows for the first time that the strength of structure-function coupling is spatially varying in line with evidence derived from other modalities, such as functional connectivity, gene expression, microstructural properties and temporal hierarchy.