Beyond the Connectome: The Dynome

Abstract

The human connectome will provide a detailed mapping of the brain’s connectivity, with fundamental insights for health and disease. However, further understanding of brain function and dysfunction will require an integrated framework that links brain connectivity with brain dynamics, as well as the biological details that relates this connectivity more directly to function. In this Perspective, we describe such a framework for studying the brain’s “dynome” and its relationship to cognition.

Components of the Language-Ready Brain

“…In order to explore these manifold agendas, I will adopt the multidisciplinary approach promoted by , which endorses an interweaving of the sciences concerned with the following topics: the computations performed by the human nervous system (the "cognome"; Poeppel, 2012), brain dynamics (the "dynome"; Kopell et al, 2014), neural wiring (the "connectome"; Seung, 2012) and genomics. This framework exposes the misleading nature of common questions surrounding whether the brain's wiring "makes us who we are, " which have been given an impetus by calls from Seung (2012) and others for a map of the connectome.…”

“…The dynome is the level of brain dynamics, encompassing electrophysiology, and neural oscillations. It explores "not only what is connected, but how and in what directions regions of the brain are connected" (Kopell et al, 2014(Kopell et al, , p. 1319. The cartographic literature (e.g., fMRI and DTI studies) typically displays theoretical and empirical satisfaction with discussions of neural "activation, " "firing, " and "pathways, " keeping at a connectomic level of spatiotemporal brain nodes and edges (Bressler and Menon, 2010).…”

“…Neuroimaging studies, for instance, do not even reach the level of MinDE, whereas a purely rhythmic approach to the dynome of the kind found in Theofanopoulou and Boeckx (Forthcoming b) satisfies MinDE without reaching the neurochemical and biophysical precision of MaxDE. Kopell et al (2014Kopell et al ( , p. 1319) stress that connectome-dynome linking hypotheses need to be supplemented with "the biological details that relate this connectivity more directly to function." This is where I will attempt to depart from analyses which remain at the levels of the dynome and cognome (e.g., Sporns, 2013).…”

“…Mechanistic ventures beyond the dynome are, I think, in the proper spirit of Turing's (other) thesis regarding morphogenesis, which was concerned not just with a description of an organism's forms (similar to the computational level of modern linguistics) but also with a proto-evo-devo theory of the cellular mechanisms which give rise to such forms (Turing, 1952, see also Maini, 2004. As Kopell et al (2014Kopell et al ( , p. 1324 note, "an immersion in the physiology supporting temporal dynamics suggests mechanisms that would not be obvious if one were thinking abstractly about computation and rhythms"; a statement which carries urgent lessons for theoretical linguistics and neuroimaging.…”

Cerebral plasticity and connectopathies: mechanisms of comorbidity of neurological diseases and depression

“…Подчеркивая необходимость динамических исследований, N. Kopell и соавт. [9] ввели понятие динома мозга и обсуждают его связь с когнитивными функциями. При заболеваниях, связанных с острыми повреждениями мозга, нарушения в коннектоме ярко выражены и регистрируются непосред-ственно после действия патологического фактора.…”