Subgraph “Backbone” Analysis of Dynamic Brain Networks during Consciousness and Anesthesia
PLoS ONE August 15, 2013 Jeongkyu Shin, George A. Mashour, Seungwoo Ku et al. 16 citations
General anesthesia rapidly alters brain network connectivity, and standard graph-theoretical methods that assume static networks are poorly suited to capture these changes. A new technique was introduced to track the temporal evolution of network modules. Multichannel EEG was recorded from 18 surgical patients anesthetized with propofol or sevoflurane. Networks were reconstructed by treating each EEG channel as a node and correlated activity between channels as a link. The frequency of subgraphs with a defined number of links was analyzed; subgraphs with high occurrence probability were called network "backbones." Constitutive, variable, and state-specific backbones were identified across consciousness, induction, maintenance, and recovery. This approach enables a granular, dynamic description of network evolution.