The individual functional connectome is unique and stable over months to years

Abstract

Functional connectomes computed from fMRI provide a means to characterize individual differences in the patterns of BOLD synchronization across regions of the entire brain. Using four resting-state fMRI datasets with a wide range of ages, we show that individual differences of the functional connectome are stable across three months to three years. Medial frontal and frontoparietal networks appear to be both unique and stable, resulting in high ID rates, as did a combination of these two networks. We conduct analyses demonstrating that these results are not driven by head motion. We also show that the edges demonstrating the most individualized features tend to connect nodes in the frontal and parietal cortices, while edges contributing the least tend to connect cross-hemispheric homologs. Our results demonstrate that the functional connectome is stable across years and is not an idiosyncratic aspect of a specific dataset, but rather reflects stable individual differences in the functional connectivity of the brain.\n\nResearch highlightsO_LIWhole-brain functional connectivity profiles obtained from four resting-state fMRI datasets are unique and stable across 3 months-3 years in adolescents, young adults, and older adults\nC_LIO_LIMedial frontal and frontoparietal networks tended to be both unique and stable\nC_LIO_LIIndividual edges in the frontal and parietal cortices tended to be most discriminative of individual subjects\nC_LI