Dynamic small-world behavior in functional brain networks unveiled by an event-related networks approach

There is growing interest in studying the role of connectivity patterns in brain functions. In recent years, functional brain networks were found to exhibit small-world properties during different brain states. In previous studies, time-independent networks were recovered from long time periods of brain activity. In this paper, we propose an approach, the event-related networks, that allows one to characterize the dynamical evolution of functional brain networks in time-frequency space. We illustrate this approach by characterizing connectivity patterns in magnetoencephalographic signals recorded during a visual stimulus paradigm. When compared with equivalent random and regular networks, the results reveal that functional connectivity varies with time and frequency during the processing of the stimulus, while maintaining a small-world structure. This approach may provide insights into the connectivity of other complex and spatially extended nonstationary systems.