The Construction And Analysis Of The Network Of Rat Brain

The research for brain structure and function is of great importance and significance. As a noninvasive and nonradiative method, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is widely utilized to analysis the structure and function of brain. Complex network analysis, which treats the brain as integration, can reveal the relationship and connectivity of different part of brain structure and function.This research aimed to construct and analyze the structure network of rat brain. We acquired the T2 images of 152 wild type rats, segmented and registered these images, and constructed the structural/IC network based on independent component analysis (ICA).We then analyzed the properties of this network, such as small-worldness and community structure. Furthermore, we calculated the correlation maps of the seed maps of 20 different regions of interests (ROI), and compared these maps with the previous community structures.We found that the IC network of rat brain showed small-worldness and can be partitioned into 5 communities with biological significance. The correlation maps also showed similarity with the community structure, suggesting that the rat brain can construct a meaningful structural network.