Functional connectivity directionality between large-scale resting-state networks in children and adolescence from the Healthy Brain Network sample

Abstract

Objective: Mental disorders often emerge during adolescence, and age-related differences in connection strengths of brain networks (static connectivity) have been identified. However, little is known about the directionality of information flow (directed connectivity) in this period of brain development. Methods: We employed dynamic graphical models (DGM) to estimate directed functional connectivity from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging data on 979 participants aged 6 to 17 years from the healthy brain network (HBN) sample. We tested for effects of age, sex, cognitive abilities and psychopathology on directionality. Results: We show robust bi-directionality in information flow between visual-medial and visual-lateral nodes of the network, in line with prior studies in adult samples. Furthermore, we found that age in this developmental sample was associated with directionality of information flow in sensorimotor and executive control networks, yet we did not find associations with cognitive abilities or psychopathology. Discussion: Our results revealed that directionality in information flow of large-scale brain networks is sensitive to age during adolescence, warranting further studies that may explore trajectories of development in more fine-grained network parcellations and in different populations.

Brain age prediction using fMRI network coupling in youths and associations with psychiatric symptoms

“…Preprocessing included FSL MCFLIRT (Jenkinson, Bannister, Brady, & Smith, 2002) with spatial smoothing (FWHM:6.0) and a high-pass filter cutoff of 100, non-aggressive ICA-AROMA Pruim, Mennes, van Rooij, et al, 2015), followed by ICA FIX with a threshold of 20 (Griffanti et al, 2014;, described in earlier work (Kaufmann et al, 2017;Lund et al, 2021). Preprocessing was followed by group level ICA using MELODIC group Independent Component Analysis (Beckmann & Smith, 2004;Hyvärinen, 1999).…”