Rich-club neurocircuitry: function, evolution, and vulnerability

Abstract

<jats:p>Over the past decades, network neuroscience has played a fundamental role in the understanding of large-scale brain connectivity architecture. Brains, and more generally nervous systems, can be modeled as sets of elements (neurons, assemblies, or cortical chunks) that dynamically interact through a highly structured and adaptive neurocircuitry. An interesting property of neural networks is that elements rich in connections are central to the network organization and tend to interconnect strongly with each other, forming so-called rich clubs. The ubiquity of rich-club organization across different species and scales of investigation suggests that this topology could be a distinctive feature of biological systems with information processing capabilities. This review surveys recent neuroimaging, computational, and cross-species comparative literature to offer an insight into the function and origin of rich-club architecture in nervous systems, discussing its relevance to human cognition and behavior, and vulnerability to brain disorders.</jats:p>

Network Path Convergence Shapes Low-Level Processing in the Visual Cortex

“…cortex (Collin et al, 2016;Griffa and Van den Heuvel, 2018). Interestingly, a strong correlation was found between the CDwbased topological hierarchy and the experimentally observed SLN-based hierarchy in a subnetwork studied previously by experimental and modeling investigations (Bastos et al, 2015;Mejias et al, 2016).…”

“…The relaxed shortest path structure shows robustness by having several alternative pathways between every node pair (in contrast to the single one found via the standard Dijkstra's algorithm), and it also solves the problem of unrealistically high binary lengths that the purely weight-minimizing approach results in Opsahl et al ( 2010 ) and Avena-Koenigsberger et al ( 2018 ). Furthermore, unlike other measures, specifically SLN and EB, CDw exposed a densely connected component of higher-order areas resembling the rich club of the cortical network, further supporting the significance of CD in understanding the functionally and pathologically important topological properties of the cerebral cortex (Collin et al, 2016 ; Griffa and Van den Heuvel, 2018 ). Interestingly, a strong correlation was found between the CDw-based topological hierarchy and the experimentally observed SLN-based hierarchy in a subnetwork studied previously by experimental and modeling investigations (Bastos et al, 2015 ; Mejias et al, 2016 ).…”

“…It is thought that modularity, core-periphery, and hierarchy are fundamental organizing principles of the anatomical network that constrain functioning. However, even the fundamental topological features exhibit large flexibility in temporally evolving functional networks (Bastos et al, 2015 ; Avena-Koenigsberger et al, 2018 ; Griffa and Van den Heuvel, 2018 ; Vezoli et al, 2021 ). A central question in understanding how network structure gives birth to the rich dynamics of cortical functioning is the role of topological features in identifying network paths of communication dynamics (Avena-Koenigsberger et al, 2018 ).…”

Imaging evolution of the primate brain: the next frontier?

“…However, the unique properties of hubs come at a high price ( van den Heuvel and Sporns, 2011 ). Cortical regions that represent hubs of the rich-club tend to show high metabolic demand and are vulnerable targets for pathogenic agents ( Bullmore and Sporns, 2012 ; Griffa and Van den Heuvel, 2018 ). From an evolutionary perspective, the advantages of a rich-club organisation appear to outweigh its drawbacks.…”

Criticality, Connectivity, and Neural Disorder: A Multifaceted Approach to Neural Computation

“…Especially vulnerable (but not exclusive to scale-free networks) is the rich club (Zhou and Mondragón, 2004 ), a group of hubs with a high degree of interconnectivity between each other. While there is growing evidence for the presence of rich-club topology in the brain (Griffa and Van den Heuvel, 2018 ; Kim and Min, 2020 ) the presence of scale-free topology (Bonifazi et al, 2009 ) is still somewhat controversial, but it provides important insight in modeling studies of dynamics on network topology (Broido and Clauset, 2019 ).…”