Group-wise optimization of common brain landmarks with joint structural and functional regulations

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Brain Imaging
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Understanding the intrinsic relationship between brain structural and functional architectures is a key challenge in neuroscience.
• Brain regions possess unique "connectional fingerprints" (inputs/outputs) that influence their functions.
• The precise nature of coherence or heterogeneity between these connectional fingerprints remains largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To computationally model the functional homogeneity underlying brain architectures.
• To investigate the relationship between structural and functional connectomes.
• To identify common brain landmarks reflecting simultaneous structural and functional consistency.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel group-wise optimization framework.
• Modeling functional homogeneity based on a consistent brain structural atlas.
• Joint regulation under structural and functional constraints.

Main Results:

• Demonstration of extraordinary accordance between brain structural and functional architectures.
• Identification of common brain landmarks that reflect both structure and function.
• Validation using the Human Connectome Project (HCP) Q1 dataset (68 subjects).

Conclusions:

• Brain structural and functional architectures exhibit significant coherence.
• The proposed framework successfully models functional homogeneity in relation to structural constraints.
• Findings provide novel insights into the integrated organization of the human brain.