Brain’s Structural and Functional Alignment Can Differ with Sex, Age and Is Possibly Genetic, Research Suggests

The level to which the brain’s wiring aligns with its activity patterns can differ with sex and age and could be hereditary, proposes research published by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. The study finds that this alignment might additionally have ramifications on cognition.

The results released July 12 in Nature Communications assist shed light on one of the greatest enigmas in biology – how the brain operates. According to senior author Dr. Amy Kuceyeski, associate professor of mathematics in the Department of Radiology and neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine. Specifically, the research study is a first step in understanding the connection between the physical wiring in the brain and its course of activity.

Dr. Kuceyeski, who leads the Computational Connectomics Research Laboratory in the Division of Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, discussed how elements as fundamental as how anatomy and physiology align in mind are not entirely understood in people. Dr. Kuceyeski continued by adding that if we wish to have the ability to treat neurological or neuropsychiatric diseases efficiently, we need to comprehend just how brain structure, and functions, engage.

To start deciphering this enigma, the first author Zijin Gu, a doctoral candidate in electrical and computer system engineering at Cornell’s Ithaca campus and a participant of the Computational Connectomics Lab evaluated information from 941 healthy young adults joining the Human Connectome Project. The Human Connectome Project is a substantial endeavor led by the National Institutes of Wellness to map all the pathways involved in human mind function.

Zijin Gu used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data to analyze the brain’s wiring or bundles of myelinated axons that send electrical signals. Then she compared that with resting-state useful MRI data, which discovers mind activity patterns and can show how different brain regions collaborate when an individual is just sitting in the MRI scanner. Utilizing these tools, Gu showed that the connection between brain co-activation (practical relationship) and brain wiring (structural connectivity) varied in different regions of the brain. The structural and functional connections that she discovered were carefully aligned in the areas of the brain associated with processing visual information and the subcortical areas of the brain involved in tasks like memory and emotion. However, there was less alignment between the brain structure and function in the brain’s limbic system, which regulates things like hunger and the fight or flight response, and the cerebellum coordinates movement.

The level of alignment between the physical structure of the brain in these areas and their activity varied amongst individuals. Also, it was more similar among related people in the research study, such as siblings or twins. Specifically, close alignment between the structural wiring and functional activity of the subcortical regions and cerebellum seemed to have a solid hereditary element with close resemblances in between related people.

The level of connectivity in various brain regions was also associated with people’s age, sex, and efficiency on cognitive tests.

” Men tend to have greater structural connectivity-functional connectivity combining in the attention as well as limbic networks, while women had greater architectural connectivity-functional connection combining in subcortical networks,” said Zijin Gu.

These sex differences might assist in clarifying why men and females commonly experience unique symptoms with brain disorders like autism or ADHD, Dr. Kuceyeski discussed. “If there are sex differences in the architectural and also functional placement in the brain, that might give us hints concerning why behavior or symptoms vary among men and also women with some atypical brain development,” she stated.

The team, which additionally included Dr. Keith Jamison, a research associate in the Computational Connectomics Lab, and Dr. Mert Sabuncu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell as well as in radiology at Weill Cornell Medication, plans to evaluate next data on children, teens and also older adult participants in the Human Connectome Project for more information about the connection in between brain structure and also function over the lifespan. They likewise intend to “develop a brain model in a box,” utilizing mathematical modeling as well as machine learning to recreate some of the patterns they’ve described in this study.

“This study is a primary step in understanding the structural and functional alignment of the human brain,” said Dr. Kuceyeski. “We can use these details to attempt to determine changes that happen as a result of brain disease, which may help lead the development of new therapies.”

Originally published on News Medical. Read the original article.

Reference: Gu, Z., et al. (2021) Heritability and interindividual variability of regional structure-function coupling. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25184-4.