Abstract
Brain activity during rest displays complex, rapidly evolving patterns in space and time. Structural connections comprising the human connectome are hypothesized to impose constraints on the dynamics 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 the millisecond scale from source-reconstructed MEG data, estimating the probability that any two brain regions will activate at consecutive time epochs. We find that the structural connectome profoundly shapes rapid spreading of neuronal avalanches, evidenced by a significant association between these transition probabilities and structural connectivity strengths (r=0.30-0.38, p<0.0001). 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
↵1 Pierpaolo Sorrentino, MD, PhD, Email: pierpaolo.SORRENTINO{at}univ-amu.fr
All sections of the paper have been modified and implemented to facilitate a better understanding of the study.
