Imaging structural co-variance between human brain regions

Abstract

Brain structure varies between people in a markedly organized fashion. Communities of brain regions co-vary in their morphological properties. For example, cortical thickness in one region influences the thickness of structurally and functionally connected regions. Such networks of structural co-variance partially recapitulate the functional networks of healthy individuals and the foci of grey matter loss in neurodegenerative disease. This architecture is genetically heritable, is associated with behavioural and cognitive abilities and is changed systematically across the lifespan. The biological meaning of this structural co-variance remains controversial, but it appears to reflect developmental coordination or synchronized maturation between areas of the brain. This Review discusses the state of current research into brain structural co-variance, its underlying mechanisms and its potential value in the understanding of various neurological and psychiatric conditions.

Disrupted brain network functional dynamics and hyper‐correlation of structural and functional connectome topology in patients with breast cancer prior to treatment

“…Unlike most previous studies of gray matter structural covariance networks, the similarity‐based extraction method we applied resulted in individual level networks that allowed us to examine correlations with functional connectomes. Gray matter structural covariance networks are believed to reflect underlying axonal connections as well as common genetic, neurotrophic, and neuroplastic processes (Alexander‐Bloch, Giedd, & Bullmore, 2013; Mechelli, Friston, Frackowiak, & Price, 2005). Our group and others have previously demonstrated, in healthy adults, that structural covariance networks are consistent with intrinsic functional networks with respect to connectivity pattern, although not in all brain regions (Damoiseaux & Greicius, 2009; Hosseini & Kesler, 2013).…”

Structure and function of the aging brain

“…Structural covariance is observed as inter-individual differences in regional brain structure covarying with other brain structures across the population [52][53][54]. Across individuals, intrinsically connected functional brain networks, such as the default network, can be topographically represented in the structural patterns of cortical gray matter.…”

Gray matter network differences between behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease

“…This method provides a precise quantitative description of cortical structure by representing brain morphology as a network in which each cortical area represents a node and nodes are connected by edges when they show as statistical covariance in their morphometric features (local thickness and folding structure of the cortex). Patterns of coordinated grey matter morphology have been proposed to reflect functional co-activation (Alexander-Bloch et al, 2013;Andrews et al, 1997;Bailey et al, 2014;Hopkins, 2004;Krongold et al, 2015), axonal connectivity (Budday et al, 2014;Gong et al, 2012) and/or genetic factors (Chen et al, 2013;Schmitt et al, 2009;2008). Analogously, brain areas that are involved in specific cognitive or behavioral functions seem to deteriorate in a coordinated way (Sepulcre et al, 2012;Voss and Zatorre, 2015).…”