Edmund W. Wong1,
David Matthew Carpenter1, Johnny Ng1, Jessica Roman1,
Ying Wei Wu2, Xiaofeng Tao2, Cheuk Ying Tang1
1Radiology,
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, United States; 2Radiology,
Shanghai East Hospital, Shanghai Tongji University, Shanghai, China
Functional connectivity has previously been shown to correlate with structural (anatomical) connectivity. Structural connectivity of brain white matter is quantified using diffusion tensor imaging to calculate fractional anisotropy (FA). In this study, we looked specifically at the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) due to its anatomical relevance to the attention network. The correlation between functional coactivation of the attention network and SLF FA was investigated using independent component analysis (ICA) and dual regression. We hypothesize that this coactivation within the nodes of the network are positively correlated to SLF FA because the structural integrity of this neural pathway has importance to the neural communication between the nodes.
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