AUTHOR=Wang Yanlu , Msghina Mussie , Li Tie-Qiang 

TITLE=Studying Sub-Dendrograms of Resting-State Functional Networks with Voxel-Wise Hierarchical Clustering

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00075

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2016.00075

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=<p>Hierarchical clustering is a useful data-driven approach to classify complex data and has been used to analyze resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and derive functional networks of the human brain at very large scale, such as the entire visual or sensory-motor cortex. In this study, we developed a voxel-wise, whole-brain hierarchical clustering framework to perform multi-stage analysis of group-averaged resting-state fMRI data in different levels of detail. With the framework we analyzed particularly the somatosensory motor and visual systems in fine details and constructed the corresponding sub-dendrograms, which corroborate consistently with the known modular organizations from previous clinical and experimental studies. The framework provides a useful tool for data-driven analysis of resting-state fMRI data to gain insight into the hierarchical organization and degree of functional modulation among the sub-units.</p>