ArticleThe European journal of neuroscience2017
Effects of spatial smoothing on functional brain networks.
Article in The European journal of neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
72 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
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- Effects of Hyperdirect Pathway Theta Burst Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Inhibitory Control, Craving, and Smoking in Adults With Nicotine Dependence: A Double-Blind, Randomized Crossover Trial.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2023Trial
- Reorganisation of Brain Hubs across Altered States of Consciousness.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- The Impact of Denoising Approaches on the Relationship Between Alzheimer's Disease Diagnostic Status and Network Topology Measures.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Positive Interpretation of Emotional Ambiguity Across Development: LC-dlPFC Circuitry.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Disrupted integration-segregation balance in the intact hemisphere in chronic spatial neglect.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- Functional and structural connectome-based predictive modelling of balance in elderly adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Dynamic network dysregulation in post-stroke aphasia: analysis of dALFF and dynamic functional connectivity.BMC medical imaging · 2026Article
- Investigating the functional neural network dynamics of cognitive-affective action planning during threat processing.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- DMN function changes on resting state fMRI in perimenopausal women.Open medicine (Warsaw, Poland) · 2026Article
- Article
- Dogs' olfactory resting-state functional connectivity is modulated by age and brain shape.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Depthwise cortical iron relates to functional connectivity and fluid cognition in healthy aging.Neurobiology of aging · 2025Article
- Association of aberrant brain network connectivity with visual dysfunction in patients with nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy: a pilot study.Quantitative imaging in medicine and surgery · 2025Article
- Dynamic functional adaptations during touch observation in autism: connectivity strength is linked to attitudes towards social touch and social responsiveness.Molecular autism · 2025Article
- Altered Self-Referential-Related Brain Regions in Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Resting-state fMRI graph theory analysis for predicting selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors treatment response in adolescent major depressive disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Monotonicity in graph theoretic summaries of fMRI data acquired during human learning.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Reproducibility of resting-state functional connectivity in healthy aging and brain injury: A mini-multiverse analysis.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- A whole-brain functional connectivity model of Alzheimer's disease pathology.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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5 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Graph-theoretical methods have rapidly become a standard tool in studies of the structure and function of the human brain. Whereas the structural connectome can be fairly straightforwardly mapped onto a complex network, there are more degrees of freedom in constructing networks that represent functional connections between brain areas. For functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, such networks are typically built by aggregating the blood-oxygen-level dependent signal time series of voxels into larger entities (such as Regions of Interest in some brain atlas) and determining their connection strengths from some measure of time-series correlations. Although it is evident that the outcome must be affected by how the voxel-level time series are treated at the preprocessing stage, there is a lack of systematic studies of the effects of preprocessing on network structure. Here, we focus on the effects of spatial smoothing, a standard preprocessing method for fMRI. We apply various levels of spatial smoothing to resting-state fMRI data and measure the changes induced in functional networks. We show that the level of spatial smoothing clearly affects the degrees and other centrality measures of functional network nodes; these changes are non-uniform, systematic, and depend on the geometry of the brain. The composition of the largest connected network component is also affected in a way that artificially increases the similarity of the networks of different subjects. Our conclusion is that wherever possible, spatial smoothing should be avoided when preprocessing fMRI data for network analysis.
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