🍩 Database of Original & Non-Theoretical Uses of Topology

(found 10 matches in 0.00379s)

  1. Toroidal Topology of Population Activity in Grid Cells (2022)

    Richard J. Gardner, Erik Hermansen, Marius Pachitariu, Yoram Burak, Nils A. Baas, Benjamin A. Dunn, May-Britt Moser, Edvard I. Moser
    Abstract The medial entorhinal cortex is part of a neural system for mapping the position of an individual within a physical environment1. Grid cells, a key component of this system, fire in a characteristic hexagonal pattern of locations2, and are organized in modules3 that collectively form a population code for the animal’s allocentric position1. The invariance of the correlation structure of this population code across environments4,5 and behavioural states6,7, independent of specific sensory inputs, has pointed to intrinsic, recurrently connected continuous attractor networks (CANs) as a possible substrate of the grid pattern1,8–11. However, whether grid cell networks show continuous attractor dynamics, and how they interface with inputs from the environment, has remained unclear owing to the small samples of cells obtained so far. Here, using simultaneous recordings from many hundreds of grid cells and subsequent topological data analysis, we show that the joint activity of grid cells from an individual module resides on a toroidal manifold, as expected in a two-dimensional CAN. Positions on the torus correspond to positions of the moving animal in the environment. Individual cells are preferentially active at singular positions on the torus. Their positions are maintained between environments and from wakefulness to sleep, as predicted by CAN models for grid cells but not by alternative feedforward models12. This demonstration of network dynamics on a toroidal manifold provides a population-level visualization of CAN dynamics in grid cells.

  2. Topological Data Analysis of C. Elegans Locomotion and Behavior (2021)

    Ashleigh Thomas, Kathleen Bates, Alex Elchesen, Iryna Hartsock, Hang Lu, Peter Bubenik
    Abstract Video of nematodes/roundworms was analyzed using persistent homology to study locomotion and behavior. In each frame, an organism's body posture was represented by a high-dimensional vector. By concatenating points in fixed-duration segments of this time series, we created a sliding window embedding (sometimes called a time delay embedding) where each point corresponds to a sequence of postures of an organism. Persistent homology on the points in this time series detected behaviors and comparisons of these persistent homology computations detected variation in their corresponding behaviors. We used average persistence landscapes and machine learning techniques to study changes in locomotion and behavior in varying environments.

  3. Topological Data Analysis Reveals Robust Alterations in the Whole-Brain and Frontal Lobe Functional Connectomes in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (2020)

    Zeus Gracia-Tabuenca, Juan Carlos Díaz-Patiño, Isaac Arelio, Sarael Alcauter
    Abstract Visual Abstract \textlessimg class="highwire-fragment fragment-image" alt="Figure" src="https://www.eneuro.org/content/eneuro/7/3/ENEURO.0543-19.2020/F1.medium.gif" width="369" height="440"/\textgreaterDownload figureOpen in new tabDownload powerpoint Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a developmental disorder characterized by difficulty to control the own behavior. Neuroimaging studies have related ADHD with the interplay of fronto-parietal attention systems with the default mode network (DMN; Castellanos and Aoki, 2016). However, some results have been inconsistent, potentially due to methodological differences in the analytical strategies when defining the brain functional network, i.e., the functional connectivity threshold and/or the brain parcellation scheme. Here, we make use of topological data analysis (TDA) to explore the brain connectome as a function of the filtration value (i.e., the connectivity threshold), instead of using a static connectivity threshold. Specifically, we characterized the transition from all nodes being isolated to being connected into a single component as a function of the filtration value. We explored the utility of such a method to identify differences between 81 children with ADHD (45 male, age: 7.26–17.61 years old) and 96 typically developing children (TDC; 59 male, age: 7.17–17.96 years old), using a public dataset of resting state (rs)fMRI in human subjects. Results were highly congruent when using four different brain segmentations (atlases), and exhibited significant differences for the brain topology of children with ADHD, both at the whole-brain network and the functional subnetwork levels, particularly involving the frontal lobe and the DMN. Therefore, this is a solid approach that complements connectomics-related methods and may contribute to identify the neurophysio-pathology of ADHD.

  6. Spatial Embedding Imposes Constraints on Neuronal Network Architectures (2018)

    Jennifer Stiso, Danielle S. Bassett
    Abstract Recent progress towards understanding circuit function has capitalized on tools from network science to parsimoniously describe the spatiotemporal architecture of neural systems. Such tools often address systems topology divorced from its physical instantiation. Nevertheless, for embedded systems such as the brain, physical laws directly constrain the processes of network growth, development, and function. We review here the rules imposed by the space and volume of the brain on the development of neuronal networks, and show that these rules give rise to a specific set of complex topologies. These rules also affect the repertoire of neural dynamics that can emerge from the system, and thereby inform our understanding of network dysfunction in disease. We close by discussing new tools and models to delineate the effects of spatial embedding.

  7. Cliques and Cavities in the Human Connectome (2018)

    Ann E. Sizemore, Chad Giusti, Ari Kahn, Jean M. Vettel, Richard F. Betzel, Danielle S. Bassett
    Abstract Encoding brain regions and their connections as a network of nodes and edges captures many of the possible paths along which information can be transmitted as humans process and perform complex behaviors. Because cognitive processes involve large, distributed networks of brain areas, principled examinations of multi-node routes within larger connection patterns can offer fundamental insights into the complexities of brain function. Here, we investigate both densely connected groups of nodes that could perform local computations as well as larger patterns of interactions that would allow for parallel processing. Finding such structures necessitates that we move from considering exclusively pairwise interactions to capturing higher order relations, concepts naturally expressed in the language of algebraic topology. These tools can be used to study mesoscale network structures that arise from the arrangement of densely connected substructures called cliques in otherwise sparsely connected brain networks. We detect cliques (all-to-all connected sets of brain regions) in the average structural connectomes of 8 healthy adults scanned in triplicate and discover the presence of more large cliques than expected in null networks constructed via wiring minimization, providing architecture through which brain network can perform rapid, local processing. We then locate topological cavities of different dimensions, around which information may flow in either diverging or converging patterns. These cavities exist consistently across subjects, differ from those observed in null model networks, and – importantly – link regions of early and late evolutionary origin in long loops, underscoring their unique role in controlling brain function. These results offer a first demonstration that techniques from algebraic topology offer a novel perspective on structural connectomics, highlighting loop-like paths as crucial features in the human brain’s structural architecture.

  8. What Can Topology Tell Us About the Neural Code? (2017)

    Carina Curto
    Abstract Neuroscience is undergoing a period of rapid experimental progress and expansion. New mathematical tools, previously unknown in the neuroscience community, are now being used to tackle fundamental questions and analyze emerging data sets. Consistent with this trend, the last decade has seen an uptick in the use of topological ideas and methods in neuroscience. In this paper I will survey recent applications of topology in neuroscience, and explain why topology is an especially natural tool for understanding neural codes.

  10. Persistent Brain Network Homology From the Perspective of Dendrogram (2012)

    Hyekyoung Lee, Hyejin Kang, Moo K. Chung, Bung-Nyun Kim, Dong Soo Lee
    Abstract The brain network is usually constructed by estimating the connectivity matrix and thresholding it at an arbitrary level. The problem with this standard method is that we do not have any generally accepted criteria for determining a proper threshold. Thus, we propose a novel multiscale framework that models all brain networks generated over every possible threshold. Our approach is based on persistent homology and its various representations such as the Rips filtration, barcodes, and dendrograms. This new persistent homological framework enables us to quantify various persistent topological features at different scales in a coherent manner. The barcode is used to quantify and visualize the evolutionary changes of topological features such as the Betti numbers over different scales. By incorporating additional geometric information to the barcode, we obtain a single linkage dendrogram that shows the overall evolution of the network. The difference between the two networks is then measured by the Gromov-Hausdorff distance over the dendrograms. As an illustration, we modeled and differentiated the FDG-PET based functional brain networks of 24 attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder children, 26 autism spectrum disorder children, and 11 pediatric control subjects.