White matter functional gradients and their formation in adolescence.

It is well known that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a widely used tool for studying brain activity. Recent research has shown that fluctuations in fMRI data can reflect functionally meaningful patterns of brain activity within the white matter. We leveraged resting-state fMRI from an adolescent population to characterize large-scale white matter functional gradients and their formation during adolescence. The white matter showed gray-matter-like unimodal-to-transmodal and sensorimotor-to-visual gradients with specific cognitive associations and a unique superficial-to-deep gradient with nonspecific cognitive associations. We propose two mechanisms for their formation in adolescence. One is a "function-molded" mechanism that may mediate the maturation of the transmodal white matter via the transmodal gray matter. The other is a "structure-root" mechanism that may support the mutual mediation roles of the unimodal and transmodal white matter maturation during adolescence. Thus, the spatial layout of the white matter functional gradients is in concert with the gray matter functional organization. The formation of the white matter functional gradients may be driven by brain anatomical wiring and functional needs.

Dynamic Causal Models and Autopoietic Systems

Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM) and the theory of autopoietic systems are two important conceptual frameworks. In this review, we suggest that they can be combined to answer important questions about self-organising systems like the brain. DCM has been developed recently by the neuroimaging community to explain, using biophysical models, the non-invasive brain imaging data are caused by neural processes. It allows one to ask mechanistic questions about the implementation of cerebral processes. In DCM the parameters of biophysical models are estimated from measured data and the evidence for each model is evaluated. This enables one to test different functional hypotheses (i.e., models) for a given data set. Autopoiesis and related formal theories of biological systems as autonomous machines represent a body of concepts with many successful applications. However, autopoiesis has remained largely theoretical and has not penetrated the empiricism of cognitive neuroscience. In this review, we try to show the connections that exist between DCM and autopoiesis. In particular, we propose a simple modification to standard formulations of DCM that includes autonomous processes. The idea is to exploit the machinery of the system identification of DCMs in neuroimaging to test the face validity of the autopoietic theory applied to neural subsystems. We illustrate the theoretical concepts and their implications for interpreting electroencephalographic signals acquired during amygdala stimulation in an epileptic patient. The results suggest that DCM represents a relevant biophysical approach to brain functional organisation, with a potential that is yet to be fully evaluated.