Critical scaling of whole-brain resting-state dynamics

Journal article

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05001-y.Scale invariance is a characteristic of neural activity. How this property emerges from neural interactions remains a fundamental question. Here, we studied the relation between scale-invariant brain dynamics and structural connectivity by analyzing human resting-state (rs-) fMRI signals, together with diffusion MRI (dMRI) connectivity and its approximation as an exponentially decaying function of the distance between brain regions. We analyzed the rs-fMRI dynamics using functional connectivity and a recently proposed phenomenological renormalization group (PRG) method that tracks the change of collective activity after successive coarse-graining at different scales. We found that brain dynamics display power-law correlations and power-law scaling as a function of PRG coarse-graining based on functional or structural connectivity. Moreover, we modeled the brain activity using a network of spins interacting through large-scale connectivity and presenting a phase transition between ordered and disordered phases. Within this simple model, we found that the observed scaling features were likely to emerge from critical dynamics and connections exponentially decaying with distance. In conclusion, our study tests the PRG method using large-scale brain activity and theoretical models and suggests that scaling of rs-fMRI activity relates to criticality.A.P.-A. was supported by a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2020-029117-I) from FSE/Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. A.P.-A. and G.D. were supported by the EU Fet Flagship Human Brain Project SGA3 (945539). G.D. was supported by the Spanish Research Project AWAKENING (PID2019-105772GB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU), State Research Agency (AEI). M.L.K. is supported by the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing (funded by the Pettit and Carlsberg Foundations) and Center for Music in the Brain (funded by the Danish National Research Foundation, DNRF117).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Authors: Ponce-Alvarez, A; Kringelbach, ML; Deco, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Communications Biology
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 627-627
• Article number: 627
• Publication date: 2023-06-10
• DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-05001-y
• EISSN: 2399-3642
• ISSN: 2399-3642
• Language: English
• Keywords: Renormalization group; Scaling; Computer science; Physics; Functional connectivity; Resting state fMRI; Neuroscience; Quantum mechanics; Connectome; Psychology; Mathematics; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Power law; Statistics; Brain activity and meditation; Electroencephalography; Granularity; Statistical physics; Scale invariance