Rapid fluctuations in functional connectivity of cortical networks encode spontaneous behavior

Experimental work across a variety of species has demonstrated that spontaneously generated behaviors are robustly coupled to variation in neural activity within the cerebral cortex. Indeed, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data suggest that functional connectivity in cortical networks varies across distinct behavioral states, providing for the dynamic reorganization of patterned activity. However, these studies generally lack the temporal resolution to establish links between cortical signals and the continuously varying fluctuations in spontaneous behavior typically observed in awake animals. Here, we took advantage of recent developments in wide-field, mesoscopic calcium imaging to monitor neural activity across the neocortex of awake mice. We develop a novel "graph of graphs" approach to quantify rapidly time-varying functional connectivity and show that spontaneous behaviors are represented by fast changes in both the activity and correlational structure of cortical network activity. Combining mesoscopic imaging with simultaneous cellular resolution 2-photon microscopy also demonstrated that the correlations among neighboring neurons and between local and large-scale networks also encodes behavior. Finally, the dynamic functional connectivity of mesoscale signals revealed subnetworks that are not predicted by traditional anatomical atlas-based parcellation of the cortex. These results provide new insight into how behavioral information is represented across the mammalian neocortex and demonstrate an analytical framework for investigating time-varying functional connectivity in neural networks.