The FD model: A new approach to the study of brain networks

Paolo Finotelli
Politecnico di Milano

The study of the brain, in view of a better understanding of brain diseases and disturbs, is one of the most important challenges in Neuroscience, and requires the coordination of contributions coming from different multidisciplinary competencies.

In this seminar, I will talk about the FD model, which combines clinical, neuropsychological, neuroanatomical and computational approaches. It considers the brain network as a weighted graph, where the nodes represent cerebral regions of interest and the links among them are weighted. Moving from the acquisition of the statistical correlations among the node time-courses, the model computes the weights of the links by matching the corresponding functional connectivity with topological and anatomical information, such as the node degree, or the physical distances between nodes. I will discuss the theoretical ideas leading to the FD model, as well as some recent applications.