Spectral Dynamic Causal Modelling of Resting-State fMRI: Relating Effective Brain Connectivity in the Default Mode Network to Genetics
arXiv Preprint Archive January 28, 2019 Yunlong Nie, Eugene Opoku, Laila Yasmin et al.
Effective connectivity within the default mode network (DMN) is associated with specific genetic variants in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment. Analyzing longitudinal resting-state fMRI and genetic data from 111 subjects (319 scans) from the ADNI database, researchers fitted dynamic causal models to estimate brain connectivity in 4-region and 6-region networks. They related connectivity to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using both linear mixed effect models and function-on-scalar regression, with parametric bootstrap approaches for testing. The study reports exploratory patterns of SNP-connectivity associations that show stability across the two statistical methods, suggesting genetic influences on DMN connectivity in these conditions.