Fig. 5: Establishing causal significance by lesioning whole-brain model.
From: Revisiting the global workspace orchestrating the hierarchical organization of the human brain
a, To establish the causal mechanistic functional relevance of the FRIC brain regions orchestrating the functional hierarchical organization of the resting state, we created a whole-brain model to fit the empirical NDTE flow matrix. b, Lesioning all FRIC compared with non-FRIC members in this whole-brain model causes a significant breakdown in information flow (see Results for significance testing). The correlation between empirical (Emp) and simulated NDTE matrices is maximally affected when FRIC members are lesioned compared both with non-FRIC members that were randomly selected (nFRIC) and with non-FRIC members that were selected using a biased method in which we chose the regions with the top 50% Gin values (nFRICbias). We also compared FRIC versus nFRIC and FRIC versus nFRICbias. c, Similarly, we found significant differences in the number of FRIC members detected when lesioning the original empirical FRIC members compared with empirical non-FRIC members, Emp versus nFRIC and Emp versus nFRICbias. We also compared FRIC versus nFRIC and FRIC versus nFRICbias. This is mechanistic evidence for the significance of FRIC in orchestrating functional organization. Emp, empirical; FRIC, functional rich club; nFRIC, nFRICbias, non-functional rich club members.
