Abstract
Using large-scale neuroimaging data from 1003 healthy participants, we demonstrate empirically and theoretically that human brain dynamics is organised around a homogeneous isotropic functional core. More importantly, this homogeneous isotropic functional core follows a turbulent-like power scaling law for functional correlations in a broad spatial range suggestive of a cascade of information processing. The underlying anatomy of the brain is expensive in terms of material and metabolic costs and it has been suggested that the trade-offs between wiring cost and topological value change over many timescales but exactly how is not known (1). Here, we demonstrate how the economy of anatomy has evolved a homogeneous isotropic functional core by using whole-brain modelling with the exponential Markov-Kennedy distance rule of anatomical connections as the cost-of-wiring principle demonstrated in the massive retrograde tract tracing studies in non-human primates by Markov, Kennedy and colleagues (2). Overall, our results reveal a novel way of analysing and modelling whole-brain dynamics that establishes a fundamental basic principle of brain organisation.