Detecting M/EEG modular brain states in rest and task

Abstract

The human brain is a dynamic networked system that continually reconfigures its connectivity patterns over time. Thus, developing approaches able to adequately detect fast brain dynamics is critical. Of particular interest are the methods that analyze the modular structure of brain networks, i.e. the presence of clusters of regions that are densely inter-connected. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to identify fast modular states that dynamically fluctuate over time during rest and task. We validated our method using MEG data recorded during a finger movement task, identifying modular states linking somatosensory and primary motor regions. The algorithm was also validated on dense-EEG data recorded during picture naming task, revealing the sub-second transition between several modular states which relate to visual processing, semantic processing and language. Next, we validated our method on a dataset of resting state dense-EEG signals recorded from 124 patients with Parkinson disease and different cognitive phenotypes. Results disclosed brain modular states that differentiate cognitively intact patients, patients with moderate cognitive deficits and patients with severe cognitive deficits. Our new approach tracks the brain modular states, in healthy subjects and patients, on an adequate task-specific timescale.