White Matter Integrity Correlations with Coactivation of Resting State fMRI

Edmund W. Wong¹, David Matthew Carpenter¹, Johnny Ng¹, Jessica Roman¹, Ying Wei Wu², Xiaofeng Tao², Cheuk Ying Tang¹

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.