Title: Metabolic connectivity mapping: Directed connectivity in the whole brain guided by energy metabolism.
Session: Oral Session
Speaker: Roman Belenya
Abstract: Studies of brain connectivity are usually limited in that it is hard to understand the directionality of signalling. Signalling directionality is not directly encoded in standard neuroimaging data derived from MRI, EEG or PET. Although recent advances provide insight into the effective connectivity of restricted pathways (Huber et al., 2021; Razi et al., 2017; Riedl et al., 2016), an understanding of whole-brain directed connectivity is lacking. Here, we show that the integration of glucose metabolic activity with structural white matter tracts and BOLD activity can be used to estimate effective connectivity on a global scale. Most of the energy devoted to neuronal signalling is consumed postsynaptically (Attwell & Laughlin, 2001). We built our whole-brain directed connectivity model as an abstraction of this fact to the level of brain regions and networks backed by the PET/MRI imaging data.
