Characterizing Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based Connectivity as Cost-effective Small World Network...

This paper reported data-driven functional connectivity (FC) analytical method to investigate functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based connectivity. We evaluated the synchronization of oxygenated hemoglobin using Pearson's correlation and employed orthogonal minimal spanning trees (OMSTs) in characterizing brain connectivity. Then we compared the resultant global cost efficiency and robustness with those generated by non-human i.e. lattice and random networks. We also further benchmarked our method using proportional threshold. Results from 59 healthy subjects demonstrated global cost efficiency and assortativity varied in lattice and random network significantly (p < 0.05), highlighting the potential of OMSTs in extracting true neuronal network. Moreover, the inadequate of proportional threshold in extracting small world network from the same dataset supported that the OMSTs might be the better alternative in FC analysis especially in evaluating cost-efficiency and robustness of network.