Author/Authors :
Zhu, Yang Department of Neurology - Shanghai Second People’s Hospital - Shanghai, China , Cheng, Lin School of Biomedical Engineering - Shanghai Jiao Tong University - Shanghai, China , He, Naying Department of Radiology - Ruijin Hospital - School of Medicine - Shanghai Jiao Tong University - Shanghai, China , Yang, Yang Department of Neurology - Shanghai Second People’s Hospital - Shanghai, China , Ling, Huawei Department of Radiology - Ruijin Hospital - School of Medicine - Shanghai Jiao Tong University - Shanghai, China , Ayaz, Hasan School of Biomedical Engineering - Science & Health Systems - Drexel University - Philadelphia, USA , Tong, Shanbao School of Biomedical Engineering - Shanghai Jiao Tong University - Shanghai, China , Sun, Junfeng School of Biomedical Engineering - Shanghai Jiao Tong University - Shanghai, China , Fu, Yi Department of Neurology & Institute of Neurology - Ruijin Hospital - School of Medicine - Shanghai Jiao Tong University - Shanghai, China
Abstract :
Functional connectivity (FC) analysis with data collected as continuous tasks and activation analysis using data from block-design
paradigms are two main methods to investigate the task-induced brain activation. If the concatenated data of task blocks extracted
from the block-design paradigm could provide equivalent FC information to that derived from continuous task data, it would
shorten the data collection time and simplify experimental procedures, and the already collected data of block-design paradigms
could be reanalyzed from the perspective of FC. Despite being used in many studies, such a hypothesis of equivalence has not yet
been tested from multiple perspectives. In this study, we collected fMRI blood-oxygen-level-dependent signals from 24 healthy
subjects during a continuous task session as well as in block-design task sessions. We compared concatenated task blocks and
continuous task data in terms of region of interest- (ROI-) based FC, seed-based FC, and brain network topology during a short
motor task. According to our results, the concatenated data was not significantly different from the continuous data in multiple
aspects, indicating the potential of using concatenated data to estimate task-state FC in short motor tasks. However, even under
appropriate experimental conditions, the interpretation of FC results based on concatenated data should be cautious and take the
influence due to inherent information loss during concatenation into account.
Keywords :
Block-Design , Task , ROI , Concatenated
