The dynamic functional connectivity fingerprint of high-grade gliomas

Abstract

Resting state fMRI has been used in many studies to investigate the impact of brain tumours on functional connectivity (FC). So far, these studies assume that FC is stationary, disregarding that the brain fluctuates over dynamic states. Here we employed resting state fMRI data of 33 patients with high-grade gliomas and 33 healthy controls to study the dynamic interplay between resting state networks and to gain insights on the impact of brain tumours on functional dynamics. Exploiting Hidden Markov Models, we showed that functional dynamics exist even in presence of a high-grade glioma and that patients featured a global decrease of connections strength as well as of network segregation. Through a multivariate analysis, we further showed that patients’ cognitive scores are highly predictive of pathological dynamics, corroborating our hypothesis that functional dynamics might be valuable biomarkers to better disentangle high-grade gliomas traits.