PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - David E. Warren
AU  - Matthew J. Sutterer
AU  - Joel Bruss
AU  - Taylor J. Abel
AU  - Andrew Jones
AU  - Hiroto Kawasaki
AU  - Michelle Voss
AU  - Martin Cassell
AU  - Matthew A. Howard
AU  - Daniel Tranel
TI  - Surgically disconnected temporal pole exhibits resting functional connectivity with remote brain regions
AID  - 10.1101/127571
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 127571
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/04/15/127571.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/04/15/127571.full
AB  - Functional connectivity, as measured by resting-state fMRI, has proven a powerful method for studying brain systems in the context of behavior, development, and disease states. However, the relationship of functional connectivity to structural connectivity remains unclear. If functional connectivity relies on structural connectivity, then anatomical isolation of a brain region should eliminate functional connectivity with other brain regions. We tested this by measuring functional connectivity of the surgically disconnected temporal pole in resection patients (N=5; mean age 37; 2F, 3M). Functional connectivity was evaluated based on coactivation of whole-brain fMRI data with the average low-frequency BOLD signal from disconnected tissue in each patient. In sharp contrast to our prediction, we observed significant functional connectivity between the disconnected temporal pole and remote brain regions in each disconnection case. These findings raise important questions about the neural bases of functional connectivity measures derived from the fMRI BOLD signal.