Regions, systems, and the brain: hierarchical measures of functional integration in fMRI

Med Image Anal. 2008 Aug;12(4):484-496. doi: 10.1016/j.media.2008.02.002. Epub 2008 Feb 15.

Abstract

In neuroscience, the notion has emerged that the brain abides by two principles: segregation and integration. Segregation into functionally specialized systems and integration of information flow across systems are basic principles that are thought to shape the functional architecture of the brain. A measure called integration, originating from information theory and derived from mutual information, has been proposed to characterize the global integrative state of a network. In this paper, we show that integration can be applied in a hierarchical fashion to quantify functional interactions between compound systems, each system being composed of several regions. We apply this method to fMRI datasets from patients with low-grade glioma and show how it can efficiently extract information related to both intra- and interhemispheric reorganization induced by lesional brain plasticity.

MeSH terms

  • Brain / anatomy & histology
  • Brain / physiology*
  • Brain Neoplasms / physiopathology
  • Glioma / physiopathology
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods*
  • Neuronal Plasticity / physiology