Effects of spatial smoothing on group-level differences in functional brain networks
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2020-07
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
19
556-574
556-574
Series
Network Neuroscience, Volume 4, issue 3
Abstract
Brain connectivity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a popular approach for detecting differences between healthy and clinical populations. Before creating a functional brain network, the fMRI time series must undergo several preprocessing steps to control for artifacts and to improve data quality. However, preprocessing may affect the results in an undesirable way. Spatial smoothing, for example, is known to alter functional network structure. Yet, its effects on group-level network differences remain unknown. Here, we investigate the effects of spatial smoothing on the difference between patients and controls for two clinical conditions: autism spectrum disorder and bipolar disorder, considering fMRI data smoothed with Gaussian kernels (0–32 mm). We find that smoothing affects network differences between groups. For weighted networks, incrementing the smoothing kernel makes networks more different. For thresholded networks, larger smoothing kernels lead to more similar networks, although this depends on the network density. Smoothing also alters the effect sizes of the individual link differences. This is independent of the region of interest (ROI) size, but varies with link length. The effects of spatial smoothing are diverse, nontrivial, and difficult to predict. This has important consequences: The choice of smoothing kernel affects the observed network differences.Description
Keywords
Autism, FMRI preprocessing, Functional connectivity, Network-based statistic, Spatial smoothing
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Citation
Triana, A M, Glerean, E, Saramäki, J & Korhonen, O 2020, ' Effects of spatial smoothing on group-level differences in functional brain networks ', Network Neuroscience, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 556-574 . https://doi.org/10.1162/netn_a_00132
