Testing group differences in brain functional connectivity: using correlations or partial correlations?

ABSTRACT: Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging allows one to study brain functional connectivity, partly motivated by evidence that patients with complex disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, may have altered functional brain connectivity patterns as compared with healthy subjects. A functional connectivity network describes statistical associations of the neural activities among distinct and distant brain regions. Recently, there is a major interest in group-level functional network analysis; however, there is a relative lack of studies on statistical inference, such as significance testing for group comparisons. In particular, it is still debatable which statistic should be used to measure pairwise associations as the connectivity weights. Many functional connectivity studies have

SUBMITTER: Kim J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4432782 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature