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SUMMARY:Hubs of brain functional networks are radically reorganized in com
 atose patients - Sophie Achard\, National Center for Scientific Research (
 CNRS)\, Grenoble\, France
DTSTART:20121023T100000Z
DTEND:20121023T110000Z
UID:TALK40571@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mikail Rubinov
DESCRIPTION:Human brain networks have topological properties in common wit
 h many other complex systems\, prompting the question: what aspects of bra
 in network organization are critical for distinctive functional properties
  of the brain\, such as consciousness? To address this question we used gr
 aph theoretical methods to explore brain network topology in resting state
  functional MRI data acquired from 17 patients with severely impaired cons
 ciousness and 20 healthy volunteers. We found that many global network pro
 perties were conserved in comatose patients. Specifically\, there was no s
 ignificant 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 degre
 e or highly efficient ``hub'' nodes. Cortical regions that were hubs of he
 althy brain networks had typically become non-hubs of comatose brain netwo
 rks and vice versa. These results indicate that global topological propert
 ies of complex brain networks may be homeostatically conserved under extre
 mely different clinical conditions and that consciousness likely depends o
 n the anatomical location of hub nodes in human brain networks.
LOCATION:BCNI seminar room\, Sir William Hardy Building\, Downing Site
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