Canonical and Replicable Multi-Scale Intrinsic Connectivity Networks in 100k+ Resting-State fMRI Datasets
Authors: Iraji A. , Fu Z. , Faghiri A. , Duda M. , Chen J. , Rachakonda S. , DeRamus T. , Kochunov P. , Adhikari B. M. , Belger A. , Ford J.M. , Mathalon D.H. , Pearlson G.D. , Potkin S.G. , Preda A. , Turner J.A. , van Erp T.G.M. , Bustillo J. R. , Yang K. , Ishizuka K. , Sawa A. , Hutchison K. , Osuch E. A. , Theberge Jean , Abbott C. , Mueller B.A. , Zhi D. , Zhuo C. , Liu S. , Xu Y. , Salman M. , Liu J. , Du Y. , Sui J. , Adali T. , Calhoun V.D. 
Published: September 2022

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) has shown considerable promise for improving our understanding of brain function and characterizing various mental and cognitive states in the healthy and disordered brain. However, the lack of accurate and precise estimations of comparable functional patterns across datasets, individuals, and ever-changing brain states in a way that captures both individual variation and inter-subject correspondence limits the clinical utility of rsfMRI and its application to single-subject analyses.

We posit that using reliable network templates and advanced group-informed network estimation approaches to accurately and precisely obtain individualized (dynamic) networks that retain cross-subject correspondence while maintaining subject-specific information is one potential solution to overcome the aforementioned barrier when considering cross-study comparability, independence of subject-level estimates, the limited data available in single studies, and the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of rsfMRI.

Toward this goal, we first obtained a reliable and replicable network template. We combined rsfMRI data of over 100k individuals across private and public datasets and selected around 58k that meet quality control (QC) criteria. We then applied multi-model-order independent component analysis (ICA) and subsampling to obtain reliable canonical intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) across multiple spatial scales. The selected ICNs (i.e., network templates) were also successfully replicated by independently analyzing the data that did not pass the QC criteria, highlighting the robustness of our adaptive template to data quality.

We next studied the feasibility of estimating the corresponding subject-specific ICNs using a multivariate-spatially constrained ICA as an example of group-informed network estimation approaches. The results highlight that several factors, including ICNs themselves, data length, and spatial resolution, play key roles in successfully estimating the ICNs at the subject level. Large-scale ICNs, in general, require less data to achieve a specific level of spatial similarity with their templates (as well as within- and between-subject spatial similarity). Moreover, increasing data length can reduce an ICN’s subject-level specificity, suggesting longer scans might not always be desirable. We also show spatial smoothing can alter results, and the positive linear relationship we observed between data length and spatial smoothness (we posit that it is at least partially due to averaging over intrinsic dynamics or individual variation) indicates the importance of considering this factor in studies such as those focused on optimizing data length. Finally, the consistency in the spatial similarity between ICNs estimated using the full-length of data and subset of it across different data lengths may suggest that the lower within-subject spatial similarity in shorter data lengths is not necessarily only defined by lower reliability in ICN estimates; rather, it can also be an indication of brain dynamics (i.e., different subsets of data may reflect different ICN dynamics), and as we increase the data length, the result approaches the average (also known as static) ICN pattern, and therefore loses its distinctiveness.