Abstract
The activity of the brain during rest displays complex, rapidly evolving patterns in space and time. Structural connections comprising the human connectome are likely to impose constraints on the evolution of this activity. Here, we use magnetoencephalography (MEG) to quantify the extent to which fast neural dynamics in the human brain are constrained by structural connections inferred from diffusion MRI tractography. We characterize the spatio-temporal unfolding of whole-brain activity at millisecond scale from source-reconstructed MEG data, estimating the probability that any two brain regions will activate at consecutive time epochs. We then test whether these probabilities associate with structural connectivity strength. We find that the structural connectome strongly shapes the fast spreading of neuronal avalanches. This finding opens new avenues to study the relationship between brain structure and neural dynamics.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
↵* Co-senior authors