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Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks

The idea that complex systems have a hierarchical modular organization originated in the early 1960s and has recently attracted fresh support from quantitative studies of large scale, real-life networks. Here we investigate the hierarchical modular (or “modules-within-modules”) decomposition of huma...

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Autores principales: Meunier, David, Lambiotte, Renaud, Fornito, Alex, Ersche, Karen D., Bullmore, Edward T.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Research Foundation 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19949480
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/neuro.11.037.2009
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author Meunier, David
Lambiotte, Renaud
Fornito, Alex
Ersche, Karen D.
Bullmore, Edward T.
author_facet Meunier, David
Lambiotte, Renaud
Fornito, Alex
Ersche, Karen D.
Bullmore, Edward T.
author_sort Meunier, David
collection PubMed
description The idea that complex systems have a hierarchical modular organization originated in the early 1960s and has recently attracted fresh support from quantitative studies of large scale, real-life networks. Here we investigate the hierarchical modular (or “modules-within-modules”) decomposition of human brain functional networks, measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 18 healthy volunteers under no-task or resting conditions. We used a customized template to extract networks with more than 1800 regional nodes, and we applied a fast algorithm to identify nested modular structure at several hierarchical levels. We used mutual information, 0 < I < 1, to estimate the similarity of community structure of networks in different subjects, and to identify the individual network that is most representative of the group. Results show that human brain functional networks have a hierarchical modular organization with a fair degree of similarity between subjects, I = 0.63. The largest five modules at the highest level of the hierarchy were medial occipital, lateral occipital, central, parieto-frontal and fronto-temporal systems; occipital modules demonstrated less sub-modular organization than modules comprising regions of multimodal association cortex. Connector nodes and hubs, with a key role in inter-modular connectivity, were also concentrated in association cortical areas. We conclude that methods are available for hierarchical modular decomposition of large numbers of high resolution brain functional networks using computationally expedient algorithms. This could enable future investigations of Simon's original hypothesis that hierarchy or near-decomposability of physical symbol systems is a critical design feature for their fast adaptivity to changing environmental conditions.
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spelling pubmed-27843012009-11-30 Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks Meunier, David Lambiotte, Renaud Fornito, Alex Ersche, Karen D. Bullmore, Edward T. Front Neuroinformatics Neuroscience The idea that complex systems have a hierarchical modular organization originated in the early 1960s and has recently attracted fresh support from quantitative studies of large scale, real-life networks. Here we investigate the hierarchical modular (or “modules-within-modules”) decomposition of human brain functional networks, measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 18 healthy volunteers under no-task or resting conditions. We used a customized template to extract networks with more than 1800 regional nodes, and we applied a fast algorithm to identify nested modular structure at several hierarchical levels. We used mutual information, 0 < I < 1, to estimate the similarity of community structure of networks in different subjects, and to identify the individual network that is most representative of the group. Results show that human brain functional networks have a hierarchical modular organization with a fair degree of similarity between subjects, I = 0.63. The largest five modules at the highest level of the hierarchy were medial occipital, lateral occipital, central, parieto-frontal and fronto-temporal systems; occipital modules demonstrated less sub-modular organization than modules comprising regions of multimodal association cortex. Connector nodes and hubs, with a key role in inter-modular connectivity, were also concentrated in association cortical areas. We conclude that methods are available for hierarchical modular decomposition of large numbers of high resolution brain functional networks using computationally expedient algorithms. This could enable future investigations of Simon's original hypothesis that hierarchy or near-decomposability of physical symbol systems is a critical design feature for their fast adaptivity to changing environmental conditions. Frontiers Research Foundation 2009-10-30 /pmc/articles/PMC2784301/ /pubmed/19949480 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/neuro.11.037.2009 Text en Copyright © 2009 Meunier, Lambiotte, Fornito, Ersche and Bullmore. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Meunier, David
Lambiotte, Renaud
Fornito, Alex
Ersche, Karen D.
Bullmore, Edward T.
Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks
title Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks
title_full Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks
title_fullStr Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks
title_full_unstemmed Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks
title_short Hierarchical Modularity in Human Brain Functional Networks
title_sort hierarchical modularity in human brain functional networks
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19949480
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/neuro.11.037.2009
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