Causally informed activity flow models provide mechanistic insight into network-generated cognitive activations

Brain activity flow models estimate the movement of task-evoked activity over brain connections to help explain network-generated task functionality. Activity flow models have been shown to accurately generate task-evoked brain activations across a wide variety of brain regions and task conditions. However, these models have had limited explanatory power, given known issues with causal interpretations of the standard functional connectivity measures used to parameterize activity flow models. We show here that functional/effective connectivity (FC) measures grounded in causal principles facilitate mechanistic interpretation of activity flow models. We progress from simple to complex FC measures, with each adding algorithmic details reflecting causal principles. This reflects many neuroscientists’ preference for reduced FC measure complexity (to minimize assumptions, minimize compute time, and fully comprehend and easily communicate methodological details), which potentially trades off with causal validity. We start with Pearson correlation (the current field standard) to remain maximally relevant to the field, estimating causal validity across a range of FC measures using simulations and empirical fMRI data. Finally, we apply causal-FC-based activity flow modeling to a dorsolateral prefrontal cortex region (DLPFC), demonstrating distributed causal network mechanisms contributing to its strong activation during a working memory task. Notably, this fully distributed model is able to account for DLPFC working memory effects traditionally thought to rely primarily on within-region (i.e., not distributed) recurrent processes. Together, these results reveal the promise of parameterizing activity flow models using causal FC methods to identify network mechanisms underlying cognitive computations in the human brain.