We describe a Connectivity Analysis TOolbox (CATO) for the reconstruction of structural and functional brain connectivity based on diffusion weighted imaging and resting-state functional MRI data. CATO is an integrative and modular software package that enables researchers to run end-to-end reconstructions from MRI data to structural and functional connectome maps, customize their analysis and utilize different software packages during the data preprocessing. The structural and functional connectome maps can be reconstructed with respect to user-defined (sub)cortical atlases providing aligned connectivity matrices for integrative multimodal analyses. We outline the structural and functional processing pipelines in CATO, the implementation in MATLAB and associated stand-alone application, and the calibration of performance with respect to simulated diffusion weighted imaging data and resting-state functional MRI data from the ICT2015 challenge and the Human Connectome Project. CATO is free open-source software and available at www.dutchconnectomelab.nl/CATO.
Brains come in many shapes and sizes. Nature has endowed big-brained primate species like humans with a proportionally large cerebral cortex. White matter connectivity - the brain's infrastructure for long-range communication - might not always scale at the same pace as the cortex. We investigated the consequences of this allometric scaling for white matter brain network connectivity. Structural T1 and diffusion MRI data were collated across fourteen primate species, describing a comprehensive 350-fold range in brain volume. We report volumetric scaling relationships that point towards a restriction in macroscale connectivity in larger brains. Building on previous findings, we show cortical surface to outpace white matter volume and the corpus callosum, suggesting the emergence of a white matter 'bottleneck' of lower levels of connectedness through the corpus callosum in larger brains. At the network level, we find a potential consequence of this bottleneck in shaping connectivity patterns, with homologous regions in the left and right hemisphere showing more divergent connectivity in larger brains. Our findings show conserved scaling relationships of major brain components and their consequence for macroscale brain circuitry, providing a comparative framework for expected connectivity architecture in larger brains such as the human brain.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.