The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR) hosts the 2015-2016 

Abstract

How You Think: Structural Network Mechanisms of Human Brain Function          

Cognitive function is driven by dynamic interactions between large-scale neural circuits or networks, enabling behavior. Fundamental principles constraining these dynamic network processes have remained elusive. I will discuss a recent application of network control theory to human neuroimaging data that provides new insights into the structural network mechanisms of human brain function. Using diffusion spectrum imaging data, we build a structural brain network with 234 nodes (brain regions) connected by weighted edges (number of white matter streamlines linking brain regions). We employ a simplified noise-free linear discrete-time and time-invariant network model of neural dynamics in which the state of brain regions depends on the connectivity between them. We interrogate this model to determine the role of brain regions in different control strategies. Our results suggest that densely connected areas, particularly in the default mode system, facilitate the movement of the brain to many easily-reachable states. Weakly connected areas, particularly in cognitive control systems, facilitate the movement of the brain to difficult-to-reach states. Areas located on the boundary between network communities, particularly in attentional control systems, facilitate the integration or segregation of diverse cognitive systems. As a whole, this body of work suggests that structural network differences between the default mode, cognitive control, and attentional control systems dictate their distinct roles in controlling brain network function. More generally, our results support the view that macroscale structural design underlies basic cognitive control processes via the fundamental mechanism of network controllability.

Biography

Danielle S. Bassett is the Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She is most well-known for her work blending neural and systems engineering to identify fundamental mechanisms of cognition and disease in human brain networks. 

She received a B.S. in physics from the Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cambridge, UK. Following a postdoctoral position at UC Santa Barbara, she was a Junior Research Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind. In 2012, she was named American Psychological Association's `Rising Star' and given a Alumni Achievement Award from the Schreyer Honors College at Pennsylvania State University for extraordinary achievement under the age of 35. In 2014, she was named an Alfred P Sloan Research Fellow and received the MacArthur Fellow Genius Grant. In 2015, she received the IEEE EMBS Early Academic Achievement Award, and was named an ONR Young Investigator.

She is the founding director of the Penn Network Visualization Program, a combined undergraduate art internship and K-12 outreach program bridging network science and the visual arts.  Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Army Research Office, the Army Research Laboratory, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, and the University of Pennsylvania. She lives with her husband and two sons in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

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