Wiener-Granger "Causality" recovers the flow of information during simple unimanual processing
Poster No:
1573
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Minha Gil1, John Kopchick2, Phillip Easter1, David Rosenberg1, Jeffrey Stanley2, Vaibhav Diwadkar1
Institutions:
1Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 2Wayne State University, Department of Psychiatry, Detroit, MI
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Brain network interactions can be characterized using undirected (functional relations between nodes) and directed models (Silverstein et al., 2016). The latter class of models can provide some insights into the vivid nature of the "flow" of information across brain networks (Bressler and Seth, 2011). Classes of directional models include DCM (Stephan and Friston, 2010) and the more flexibly applied Wiener-Granger Causality (WGC)(Bressler and Kelso, 2016). It has been hypothesized that the "flow" of information may be affected in conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which has been associated with connectivity loss in frontal, striatal and thalamic (FST) circuits which is thought to be exacerbated by repetitive motor behaviors (Burguière, 2015). Thus, here, we provide the first application of WGC applied to task-based data collected in OCD participants (and healthy controls, HC), where the task, a basic motor control paradigm (Morris et al., 2018) was likely to evoke posterior to anterior information flow across the cerebrum. After extracting fMRI time series in a functionally defined 246-region cerebral atlas (Fan et al., 2016), WGC was used to estimate directed functional graphs (246 nodes, 60,270 unique edges) in each participant, which allows for the quantification of directional dominance across various lobes of the brain.
Methods:
67 subjects (37 OCD, ages: 14-21 yrs.) engaged in a visuo-motor integration task (finger tap in response to green or red probes) during fMRI (Siemens Verio 3T). fMRI data were preprocessed using SPM12 (typical methods). After extracting averaged time-series from each of the 246 nodes (organized into seven "lobes") WGC (lag 1) across all pairs (and in both directions) was estimated from in-house scripts in R. For each pair, the estimated WGC coefficients were used as the dependent variable in mixed model Analyses of Variance, with Group (OCD vs HC) modeled as between-subjects factor, and Direction (Node1 to Node2 vs. Node2 to Node1) modeled as within-subjects factor.
Results:
While we did not observe substantial main effects of group or of interactions, a large corpus of pairs of nodes evinced main effects of direction (Figure 1A). As seen, the asymmetric significance map highlights the direction in which the effects were significant for observed main effects (Vertical Axis: Source; Horizontal Axis: Target). The effects are distilled into circular frequency bars for each node (Figure 1B). For each node, we represent the source frequency (outward radiating bars) and target frequency (inward radiating bars). As seen, occipital lobes tend to have very high source frequencies, whereas frontal lobes tend to have very high target frequencies.
Conclusions:
While we did not observe notable effects of group or any interactions, our analyses revealed widespread effects of directionality on WGC coefficients. When summarized, these data recover the putative directional flow of information in the context of this visually driven motor paradigm. As seen, the direction flow appears to recapitulation a posterior (occipital, parietal, thalamic) to frontal flow of information. These results are consistent with the sensorial role of thalamic and occipital regions in "feeding" information up the cortex (Kody and Diwadkar, 2022), the parietal regions for supplementing this sensory processing (Kobayashi, 2016), and the . Due to the nature of the visuo-motor task, the high ratios in occipital and subcortical nuclei regions may be attributed to their roles in visual information processing and motor control, respectively. While further fractionation of the task into its different conditions is ongoing, our results provide a lucid demonstration of the value of WGC in recovering task-driven directional effects in large networks.
Higher Cognitive Functions:
Executive Function, Cognitive Control and Decision Making
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural) 1
fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling
Motor Behavior:
Visuo-Motor Functions 2
Neuroanatomy, Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission:
Anatomy and Functional Systems
Keywords:
Data analysis
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Motor
Obessive Compulsive Disorder
Statistical Methods
Other - Granger Causality
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
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Burguière, E., 2015. Striatal circuits, habits, and implications for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 30, 59-65.
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