BBCA Analysis of Functional & Structural Networks

Alex Kenneth Smith¹, David J. Madden¹, Pooja Gaur¹, Nan-Kuei Chen¹

The medial cortical regions have been shown to exhibit significantly decreased brain activity during task conditions. It has been proposed that these regions form the nodes of a default mode network that is continuously and spontaneously active, even in the absence of an external task. Changes in the functioning of the default mode network have been reported for healthy older adults, relative to younger adults. The following analysis describes a behavior-based connectivity analysis method, in which whole-brain data are used to identify behaviorally-relevant intrinsic and functionally connected networks and the fractional anisotropy that indicates the level of connection between areas.