Studying the topological organization of the cerebral blood flow fluctuations in resting state

In this paper the cerebral blood flow (CBF) in resting state obtained from SPECT imaging is employed as a hemodynamics descriptor to study the concurrent changes between brain structures and to build binarized connectivity graphs. The statistical similarity in CBF between pairs of regions was measured by computing the Pearson correlation coefficient across 31 normal subjects. We demonstrated the CBF connectivity matrices follow ‘small-world’ attributes similar to previous studies using different modalities of neuroimaging data (MRI, fMRI, EEG, MEG). The highest concurrent fluctuations in CBF were detected between homologous cortical regions (homologous callosal connections). It was found that the existence of structural core regions or hubs positioned on a high proportion of shortest paths within the CBF network. These were anatomically distributed in frontal, limbic, occipital and parietal regions that suggest its important role in functional integration. Our findings point to a new possibility of using CBF variable to investigate the brain networks based on graph theory in normal and pathological states. Likewise, it opens a window to future studies to link covariation between morphometric descriptors, axonal connectivity and CBF processes with a potential diagnosis applications.