Hierarchical functional differences between gyri and sulci at different scales

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Computational Neuroscience
• Brain Imaging Analysis

Background:

• Cortical folding patterns, gyri and sulci, exhibit structural and functional heterogeneity.
• Limited understanding of functional differences between gyri and sulci due to focus on spatial/temporal domains and local/global scales.
• Lack of analytical tools for interpreting hierarchical spatiotemporal features in brain function.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore hierarchical functional differences between gyri and sulci.
• To overcome limitations in previous studies by considering spatiotemporal and hierarchical aspects.
• To develop and apply a novel analytical framework for brain function interpretation.

Main Methods:

• Proposed a novel Hierarchical Interpretable Autoencoder (HIAE).
• Utilized a deep convolutional autoencoder to extract hierarchical features.
• Employed a feature interpreter to map features into an embedding vector for interpretable spatiotemporal patterns.
• Evaluated the framework on the Human Connectome Project task functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset.

Main Results:

• The HIAE model effectively extracted and interpreted neuroscientifically meaningful hierarchical spatiotemporal features.
• Gyri demonstrated more global activation patterns.
• Sulci demonstrated more local activation patterns, indicating a scale-dependent transition.
• Distinct functional activation patterns were identified between gyri and sulci.

Conclusions:

• The study provides novel insights into the brain's anatomy-function relationship.
• Hierarchical spatiotemporal feature analysis is crucial for understanding functional brain organization.
• Gyri and sulci play distinct, scale-dependent functional roles in the human brain.