Related papers: A complex network perspective on brain disease
The human organism is an integrated network where complex physiologic systems, each with its own regulatory mechanisms, continuously interact, and where failure of one system can trigger a breakdown of the entire network. Identifying and…
This thesis is a compendium of research which brings together ideas from the fields of Complex Networks and Computational Neuroscience to address two questions regarding neural systems: 1) How the activity of neurons, via synaptic changes,…
The field of neuroscience is facing an unprecedented expanse in the volume and diversity of available data. Traditionally, network models have provided key insights into the structure and function of the brain. With the advent of big data…
In network science complex systems are represented as a mathematical graphs consisting of a set of nodes representing the components and a set of edges representing their interactions. The framework of networks has led to significant…
The human connectome at the level of fiber tracts between brain regions has been shown to differ in patients with brain disorders compared to healthy control groups. Nonetheless, there is a potentially large number of different network…
In the last decade, network science has shed new light both on the structural (anatomical) and on the functional (correlations in the activity) connectivity among the different areas of the human brain. The analysis of brain networks has…
One major challenge of neuroscience is finding interesting structures in a seemingly disorganized neural activity. Often these structures have computational implications that help to understand the functional role of a particular brain…
Structure entails function and thus a structural description of the brain will help to understand its function and may provide insights into many properties of brain systems, from their robustness and recovery from damage, to their dynamics…
Brain functional connectivity alterations, that is, pathological changes in the signal exchange between areas of the brain, occur in several neurological diseases, including neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric ones. They consist in…
Gene expression represents a fundamental interface between genes and environment in the development and ongoing plasticity of the human organism. Individual differences in gene expression are likely to underpin much of human diversity,…
In a highly simplified view, a disease can be seen as the phenotype emerging from the interplay of genetic predisposition and fluctuating environmental stimuli. We formalize this situation in a minimal model, where a network (representing…
Understanding the human brain remains the Holy Grail in biomedical science, and arguably in all of the sciences. Our brains represent the most complex systems in the world (and some contend the universe) comprising nearly one hundred…
To explore the mechanistic relationships between ageing, frailty and mortality, we developed a computational model in which possible health attributes are represented by the nodes of a complex network. Each node can be either damaged (i.e.…
Traditional approaches to understanding the brain's resilience to neuropathology have identified neurophysiological variables, often described as brain or cognitive 'reserve,' associated with better outcomes. However, mechanisms of function…
Brain disorders in the early and late life of humans potentially share pathological alterations in brain functions. However, the key evidence from neuroimaging data for pathological commonness remains unrevealed. To explore this hypothesis,…
Complex network theory aims to model and analyze complex systems that consist of multiple and interdependent components. Among all studies on complex networks, topological structure analysis is of the most fundamental importance, as it…
Diseases involve complex processes and modifications to the cellular machinery. The gene expression profile of the affected cells contains characteristic patterns linked to a disease. Hence, biological knowledge pertaining to a disease can…
From interacting cellular components to networks of neurons and neural systems, interconnected units comprise a fundamental organizing principle of the nervous system. Understanding how their patterns of connections and interactions give…
Neuropsychiatric disorders impact functional connectivity of the brain at the network level. The identification and statistical testing of disorder-related networks remains challenging. We propose novel methods to streamline the detection…
Human brains lie at the core of complex neurobiological systems, where the neurons, circuits, and subsystems interact in enigmatic ways. Understanding the structural and functional mechanisms of the brain has long been an intriguing pursuit…