TY - JOUR
T1 - Multiplex core-periphery organization of the human connectome
AU - Battiston, Federico
AU - Guillon, Jeremy
AU - Chavez, Mario
AU - Latora, Vito
AU - De Vico Fallani, Fabrizio
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/9/1
Y1 - 2018/9/1
N2 - What is the core of the human brain is a fundamental question that has been mainly addressed by studying the anatomical connections between differently specialized areas, thus neglecting the possible contributions from their functional interactions. While many methods are available to identify the core of a network when connections between nodes are all of the same type, a principled approach to define the core when multiple types of connectivity are allowed is still lacking. Here, we introduce a general framework to define and extract the core-periphery structure of multi-layer networks by explicitly taking into account the connectivity patterns at each layer. We first validate our algorithm on synthetic networks of different size and density, and with tunable overlap between the cores at different layers. We then use our method to merge information from structural and functional brain networks, obtaining in this way an integrated description of the core of the human connectome. Results confirm the role of the main known cortical and subcortical hubs, but also suggest the presence of new areas in the sensori-motor cortex that are crucial for intrinsic brain functioning. Taken together these findings provide fresh evidence on a fundamental question in modern neuroscience and offer new opportunities to explore the mesoscale properties of multimodal brain networks.
AB - What is the core of the human brain is a fundamental question that has been mainly addressed by studying the anatomical connections between differently specialized areas, thus neglecting the possible contributions from their functional interactions. While many methods are available to identify the core of a network when connections between nodes are all of the same type, a principled approach to define the core when multiple types of connectivity are allowed is still lacking. Here, we introduce a general framework to define and extract the core-periphery structure of multi-layer networks by explicitly taking into account the connectivity patterns at each layer. We first validate our algorithm on synthetic networks of different size and density, and with tunable overlap between the cores at different layers. We then use our method to merge information from structural and functional brain networks, obtaining in this way an integrated description of the core of the human connectome. Results confirm the role of the main known cortical and subcortical hubs, but also suggest the presence of new areas in the sensori-motor cortex that are crucial for intrinsic brain functioning. Taken together these findings provide fresh evidence on a fundamental question in modern neuroscience and offer new opportunities to explore the mesoscale properties of multimodal brain networks.
KW - brain connectivity
KW - complex networks
KW - multilayer networks
KW - multimodal integration
KW - rich-club
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85054478719&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1098/rsif.2018.0514
DO - 10.1098/rsif.2018.0514
M3 - Article
C2 - 30209045
AN - SCOPUS:85054478719
SN - 1742-5689
VL - 15
JO - Journal of the Royal Society Interface
JF - Journal of the Royal Society Interface
IS - 146
M1 - 0514
ER -