Abstract
The wiring of the brain connects micro-architecturally diverse neuronal populations, but the conventional graph model, which encodes macroscale brain connectivity as a network of nodes and edges, abstracts away the rich biological detail of each regional node. Here, we annotate connectomes with multiple biological attributes and formally study assortative mixing in annotated connectomes. Namely, we quantify the tendency for regions to be connected based on the similarity of their micro-architectural attributes. We perform all experiments using four cortico-cortical connectome datasets from three different species, and consider a range of molecular, cellular, and laminar annotations. We show that mixing between micro-architecturally diverse neuronal populations is supported by long-distance connections and find that the arrangement of connections with respect to biological annotations is associated to patterns of regional functional specialization. By bridging scales of cortical organization, from microscale attributes to macroscale connectivity, this work lays the foundation for next-generation annotated connectomics.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2850 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-16 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 14 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 18 May 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank Laura Suarez, Golia Shafiei, Bertha Vazquez-Rodriguez, Ross Markello, Zhen-Qi Liu, Filip Milisav, and Andrea Luppi for insightful comments. VB acknowledges support from the Fonds de Recherche Québec - Nature et Technologie and from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). BM acknowledges support from the NSERC, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Brain Canada Foundation Future Leaders Fund, the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives initiative.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
Funding
We thank Laura Suarez, Golia Shafiei, Bertha Vazquez-Rodriguez, Ross Markello, Zhen-Qi Liu, Filip Milisav, and Andrea Luppi for insightful comments. VB acknowledges support from the Fonds de Recherche Québec - Nature et Technologie and from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). BM acknowledges support from the NSERC, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Brain Canada Foundation Future Leaders Fund, the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives initiative.