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arXiv · 1905.11249

Network properties of healthy and Alzheimer's brains

José C. P. Coninck·Fabiano A. S. Ferrari·Adriane S. Reis·Kelly C. Iarosz·Antonio M. Batista·Ricardo L. Viana
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Abstract

Small-world structures are often used to describe structural connections in the brain. In this work, we compare the structural connection of cortical areas of a healthy brain and a brain affected by Alzheimer's disease with artificial small-world networks. Based on statistics analysis, we demonstrate that similar small-world networks can be constructed using Newman-Watts procedure. The network quantifiers of both structural matrices are identified inside the probabilistic valley. Despite of similarities between structural connection matrices and sampled small-world networks, increased assortativity can be found in the Alzheimer brain. Our results indicate that network quantifiers can be helpful to identify abnormalities in real structural connection matrices.

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José C. P. Coninck, Fabiano A. S. Ferrari, Adriane S. Reis, Kelly C. Iarosz, Antonio M. Batista, Ricardo L. Viana. 2019-05-24. Network properties of healthy and Alzheimer's brains. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2020.124475

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