Hubs of brain functional networks are radically reorganized in comatose patients

Human brain networks have topological properties in common with many other complex systems, prompting the following question: what aspects of brain network organization are critical for distinctive functional properties of the brain, such as consciousness? To address this question, we used graph the...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2012-12, Vol.109 (50), p.20608-20613
Main Authors: Achard, Sophie, Delon-Martin, Chantal, Vértes, Petra E, Renard, Félix, Schenck, Maleka, Schneider, Francis, Heinrich, Christian, Kremer, Stéphane, Bullmore, Edward T
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Anatomy
Biological Sciences
Brain
Brain - pathology
Brain - physiopathology
Brain damage
Brain Injuries - complications
Brain Injuries - pathology
Brain Injuries - physiopathology
Case-Control Studies
Coma - etiology
Coma - pathology
Coma - physiopathology
Comas
Community structure
Computer networking
Computer Science
Connectivity
Consciousness
Engineering Sciences
Female
functional properties
Humans
Life Sciences
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medical Imaging
Middle Aged
Models, Neurological
Modularity
Nerve Net - pathology
Nerve Net - physiopathology
Neurons and Cognition
Patients
Signal and Image Processing
Topology
Volunteerism
volunteers
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Human brain networks have topological properties in common with many other complex systems, prompting the following question: what aspects of brain network organization are critical for distinctive functional properties of the brain, such as consciousness? To address this question, we used graph theoretical methods to explore brain network topology in resting state functional MRI data acquired from 17 patients with severely impaired consciousness and 20 healthy volunteers. We found that many global network properties were conserved in comatose patients. Specifically, there was no significant abnormality of global efficiency, clustering, small-worldness, modularity, or degree distribution in the patient group. However, in every patient, we found evidence for a radical reorganization of high degree or highly efficient “hub” nodes. Cortical regions that were hubs of healthy brain networks had typically become nonhubs of comatose brain networks and vice versa. These results indicate that global topological properties of complex brain networks may be homeostatically conserved under extremely different clinical conditions and that consciousness likely depends on the anatomical location of hub nodes in human brain networks.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1208933109