Abstract
The brain’s modular functional organization facilitates adaptability. Modularity has been linked with a wide range of cognitive abilities such as intelligence, memory, and learning. However, much of this work has (1) considered modularity while a participant is at rest rather than during tasks conditions and/or (2) relied primarily on lab-based cognitive assessments. Thus, the extent to which modularity can provide information about real-word behavior remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated whether functional modularity during resting-state and task-based fMRI was associated with academic learning (measured by GPA) and ability (measured by PSAT) in a large sample of high school students. Additional questions concerned the extent to which modularity differs between rest and task conditions, and across spatial scales. Results indicated that whole-brain modularity during task conditions was significantly associated with academic learning. In contrast to prior work, no such associations were observed for resting-state modularity. We further showed that differences in modularity between task conditions and resting-state varied across spatial scales. Taken together, the present findings inform how functional brain network modularity – during task conditions and while at rest – relate to a range of cognitive abilities.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
* RFB and AEG share equally in senior authorship
Author Note and Data Availability: The authors declare no competing interests. Data and code supporting the manuscript are publicly available on the Open Science Framework at: https://osf.io/naj3y/.
1 This refers specifically to “static” measures of modularity. “Dynamic” estimates of modularity – which were not considered in the present study due to experimental task design – have been frequently applied to task data (e.g. Bassett et al., 2011; Gerraty et al., 2018; Reddy et al., 2018).
