Information transmission velocity-based dynamic hierarchical brain networks

Lin Jiang; Fali Li; Zhaojin Chen; Bin Zhu; Chanlin Yi; Yuqin Li; Tao Zhang; Yueheng Peng; Yajing Si; Zehong Cao; Antao Chen; Dezhong Yao; Xun Chen; Peng Xu

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119997

Information transmission velocity-based dynamic hierarchical brain networks

Neuroimage. 2023 Apr 15:270:119997. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119997. Epub 2023 Mar 1.

Authors

Lin Jiang¹, Fali Li¹, Zhaojin Chen¹, Bin Zhu¹, Chanlin Yi¹, Yuqin Li¹, Tao Zhang², Yueheng Peng¹, Yajing Si³, Zehong Cao⁴, Antao Chen⁵, Dezhong Yao⁶, Xun Chen⁷, Peng Xu⁸

Affiliations

¹ The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.2006, Xiyuan Ave, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China; School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in BioMedicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China.
² School of science, Xihua University, Chengdu 610039, China.
³ School of Psychology, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453003, China.
⁴ STEM, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia.
⁵ Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
⁶ The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.2006, Xiyuan Ave, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China; School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in BioMedicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; School of Electrical Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China; Research Unit of NeuroInformation, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Chengdu 2019RU035, China. Electronic address: dyao@uestc.edu.cn.
⁷ Department of Neurosurgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230001, China; Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. Electronic address: xunchen@ustc.edu.cn.
⁸ The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.2006, Xiyuan Ave, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China; School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in BioMedicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China. Electronic address: xupeng@uestc.edu.cn.

PMID: 36868393
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119997

Abstract

The brain functions as an accurate circuit that regulates information to be sequentially propagated and processed in a hierarchical manner. However, it is still unknown how the brain is hierarchically organized and how information is dynamically propagated during high-level cognition. In this study, we developed a new scheme for quantifying the information transmission velocity (ITV) by combining electroencephalogram (EEG) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and then mapped the cortical ITV network (ITVN) to explore the information transmission mechanism of the human brain. The application in MRI-EEG data of P300 revealed bottom-up and top-down ITVN interactions subserving P300 generation, which was comprised of four hierarchical modules. Among these four modules, information exchange between visual- and attention-activated regions occurred at a high velocity, related cognitive processes could thus be efficiently accomplished due to the heavy myelination of these regions. Moreover, inter-individual variability in P300 was probed to be attributed to the difference in information transmission efficiency of the brain, which may provide new insight into the cognitive degenerations in clinical neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, from the transmission velocity perspective. Together, these findings confirm the capacity of ITV to effectively determine the efficiency of information propagation in the brain.

Keywords: Dynamic hierarchical modulation; EEG-MRI; Information transmission velocity network; Multimodal fusion; Performance prediction.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Brain Mapping / methods
Brain* / physiology
Cognition / physiology
Diffusion Tensor Imaging*
Electroencephalography / methods
Humans