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Objective: Various studies in the brain mapping field have demonstrated that there exist multiple concurrent functional networks that are spatially overlapped and interacting with each other during specific task performance to jointly realize the total brain function. Assessing such spatial overlap patterns of functional networks (SOPFNs) based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has thus received increasing interest for brain function studies. However, there are still two crucial issues to be addressed. First, the SOPFNs are assessed over the entire fMRI scan assuming the temporal stationarity, while possibly time-dependent dynamics of the SOPFNs is not sufficiently explored. Second, the SOPFNs are assessed within individual subjects, while group-wise consistency of the SOPFNs is largely unknown., Methods: To address the two issues, we propose a novel computational framework of group-wise sparse representation of whole-brain fMRI temporal segments to assess the temporal dynamic spatial patterns of SOPFNs that are consistent across different subjects., Results: Experimental results based on the recently publicly released Human Connectome Project grayordinate task fMRI data demonstrate that meaningful SOPFNs exhibiting dynamic spatial patterns across different time periods are effectively and robustly identified based on the reconstructed concurrent functional networks via the proposed framework. Specifically, those SOPFNs locate significantly more on gyral regions than on sulcal regions across different time periods., Conclusion: These results reveal novel functional architecture of cortical gyri and sulci., Significance: Moreover, these results help better understand functional dynamics mechanisms of cerebral cortex in the future.

Recent studies have shown that quantitative description of gyral shape patterns offers a novel window to examine the relationship between brain structure and function. Along this research line, this paper examines a unique and interesting type of cortical gyral region where 3 different gyral crests meet, termed 3-hinge gyral region. We extracted 3-hinge gyral regions in macaque/chimpanzee/human brains, quantified and compared the relevant DTI-derived fiber densities in 3-hinge and 2-hinge gyral regions. Our observations consistently showed that DTI-derived fiber densities in 3-hinge regions are much higher than those in 2-hinge regions. Therefore, we hypothesize that besides the cortical expansion, denser fiber connections can induce the formation of 3-hinge gyri. To examine the biomechanical basis of this hypothesis, we constructed a series of 3-dimensional finite element soft tissue models based on continuum growth theory to investigate fundamental biomechanical mechanisms of consistent 3-hinge gyri formation. Our computational simulation results consistently showed that during gyrification gyral regions with higher concentrations of growing axonal fibers tend to form 3-hinge gyri. Our integrative approach combining neuroimaging data analysis and computational modeling appears effective in probing a plausible theory of 3-hinge gyri formation and providing new insights into structural and functional cortical architectures and their relationship., (© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

For decades, seeking common, consistent and corresponding anatomical/functional regions across individual brains via cortical parcellation has been a longstanding challenging problem. In our opinion, two major barriers to solve this problem are determining meaningful cortical boundaries that segregate homogeneous regions and establishing correspondences among parcellated regions of multiple brains. To establish a corresponding system across subjects, we recently developed the Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-based Cortical Landmarks (DICCCOL) system which possesses group-wise consistent white matter fiber connection patterns across individuals and thus provides a dense map of corresponding cortical landmarks. Despite this useful property, however, the DICCCOL landmarks are still far from covering the whole cerebral cortex and do not provide clear structural/functional cortical boundaries. To address the above limitation while leveraging the advantage of DICCCOL, in this paper, we present a novel approach for group-wise consistent parcellation of the cerebral cortex via a hierarchical scheme. In each hierarchical level, DICCCOLs are used as corresponding samples to automatically determine the cluster number so that other cortical surface vertices are iteratively classified into corresponding clusters across subjects within a group-wise classification framework. Experimental results showed that this approach can achieve consistent fine-granularity cortical parcellation with intrinsically-established structural correspondences across individual brains. Besides, comparisons with resting-state and task-based fMRI datasets demonstrated that the group-wise parcellation boundaries segregate functionally homogeneous areas., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The recently publicly released Human Connectome Project (HCP) grayordinate-based fMRI data not only has high spatial and temporal resolution, but also offers group-corresponding fMRI signals across a large population for the first time in the brain imaging field, thus significantly facilitating mapping the functional brain architecture with much higher resolution and in a group-wise fashion. In this article, we adopt the HCP grayordinate task-based fMRI (tfMRI) data to systematically identify and characterize task-based heterogeneous functional regions (THFRs) on cortical surface, i.e., the regions that are activated during multiple tasks conditions and contribute to multiple task-evoked systems during a specific task performance, and to assess the spatial patterns of identified THFRs on cortical gyri and sulci by applying a computational framework of sparse representations of grayordinate brain tfMRI signals. Experimental results demonstrate that both consistent task-evoked networks and intrinsic connectivity networks across all subjects and tasks in HCP grayordinate data are effectively and robustly reconstructed via the proposed sparse representation framework. Moreover, it is found that there are relatively consistent THFRs locating at bilateral parietal lobe, frontal lobe, and visual association cortices across all subjects and tasks. Particularly, those identified THFRs locate significantly more on gyral regions than on sulcal regions. These results based on sparse representation of HCP grayordinate data reveal novel functional architecture of cortical gyri and sulci, and might provide a foundation to better understand functional mechanisms of the human cerebral cortex in the future., (© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

For decades, it has been largely unknown to what extent multiple functional networks spatially overlap/interact with each other and jointly realize the total cortical function. Here, by developing novel sparse representation of whole-brain fMRI signals and by using the recently publicly released large-scale Human Connectome Project high-quality fMRI data, we show that a number of reproducible and robust functional networks, including both task-evoked and resting state networks, are simultaneously distributed in distant neuroanatomic areas and substantially spatially overlapping with each other, thus forming an initial collection of holistic atlases of functional networks and interactions (HAFNIs). More interestingly, the HAFNIs revealed two distinct patterns of highly overlapped regions and highly specialized regions and exhibited that these two patterns of areas are reciprocally localized, revealing a novel organizational principle of cortical function.

Establishment of structural and functional correspondences of human brain that can be quantitatively encoded and reproduced across different subjects and populations is one of the key issues in brain mapping. As an attempt to address this challenge, our recently developed Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-based Cortical Landmarks (DICCCOL) system reported 358 connectional landmarks, each of which possesses consistent DTI-derived white matter fiber connection pattern that is reproducible in over 240 healthy brains. However, the DICCCOL system can be substantially improved by integrating anatomical and morphological information during landmark initialization and optimization procedures. In this paper, we present a novel anatomy-guided landmark discovery framework that defines and optimizes landmarks via integrating rich anatomical, morphological, and fiber connectional information for landmark initialization, group-wise optimization and prediction, which are formulated and solved as an energy minimization problem. The framework finally determined 555 consistent connectional landmarks. Validation studies demonstrated that the 555 landmarks are reproducible, predictable, and exhibited reasonably accurate anatomical, connectional, and functional correspondences across individuals and populations and thus are named anatomy-guided DICCCOL or A-DICCCOL. This A-DICCCOL system represents common cortical architectures with anatomical, connectional, and functional correspondences across different subjects and would potentially provide opportunities for various applications in brain science.

Group-wise activation detection in task-based fMRI has been widely used because of its robustness to noises and its capacity to deal with variability of individual brains. However, current group-wise fMRI activation detection methods typically rely on the co-registration of individual brains' fMRI images, which has difficulty in dealing with the remarkable anatomic variation of different brains. As a consequence, the resulted misalignments could significantly degrade the required inter-subject correspondences, thus substantially reducing the sensitivity and specificity of group-wise fMRI activation detection. To deal with these challenges, this paper presents a novel approach to detecting group-wise fMRI activation on our recently developed and validated Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-based Cortical Landmarks (DICCCOL). The basic idea here is that the first-level general linear model (GLM) analysis is first performed on the fMRI signal of each corresponding DICCCOL landmark in individual brain's own space, and then the estimated effect sizes of the same landmark from a group of subjects are statistically assessed with the mixed-effect model at the group level. Finally, the consistently activated DICCCOL landmarks are determined and declared in a group-wise fashion in response to external block-based stimuli. Our experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed approach can detect meaningful activations.

Both resting state fMRI (R-fMRI) and task-based fMRI (T-fMRI) have been widely used to study the functional activities of the human brain during task-free and task-performance periods, respectively. However, due to the difficulty in strictly controlling the participating subject's mental status and their cognitive behaviors during R-fMRI/T-fMRI scans, it has been challenging to ascertain whether or not an R-fMRI/T-fMRI scan truly reflects the participant's functional brain states during task-free/task-performance periods. This paper presents a novel computational approach to characterizing and differentiating the brain's functional status into task-free or task-performance states, by which the functional brain activities can be effectively understood and differentiated. Briefly, the brain's functional state is represented by a whole-brain quasi-stable connectome pattern (WQCP) of R-fMRI or T-fMRI data based on 358 consistent cortical landmarks across individuals, and then an effective sparse representation method was applied to learn the atomic connectome patterns (ACPs) of both task-free and task-performance states. Experimental results demonstrated that the learned ACPs for R-fMRI and T-fMRI datasets are substantially different, as expected. A certain portion of ACPs from R-fMRI and T-fMRI data were overlapped, suggesting some subjects with overlapping ACPs were not in the expected task-free/task-performance brain states. Besides, potential outliers in the T-fMRI dataset were further investigated via functional activation detections in different groups, and our results revealed unexpected task-performances of some subjects. This work offers novel insights into the functional architectures of the brain., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Quantitative modeling and analysis of structural and functional brain networks based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data have received extensive interest recently. However, the regularity of these structural and functional brain networks across multiple neuroimaging modalities and also across different individuals is largely unknown. This paper presents a novel approach to inferring group-wise consistent brain subnetworks from multimodal DTI/resting-state fMRI datasets via multi-view spectral clustering of cortical networks, which were constructed upon our recently developed and validated large-scale cortical landmarks-DICCCOL (dense individualized and common connectivity-based cortical landmarks). We applied the algorithms on DTI data of 100 healthy young females and 50 healthy young males, obtained consistent multimodal brain networks within and across multiple groups, and further examined the functional roles of these networks. Our experimental results demonstrated that the derived brain networks have substantially improved inter-modality and inter-subject consistency.

Is there a common structural and functional cortical architecture that can be quantitatively encoded and precisely reproduced across individuals and populations? This question is still largely unanswered due to the vast complexity, variability, and nonlinearity of the cerebral cortex. Here, we hypothesize that the common cortical architecture can be effectively represented by group-wise consistent structural fiber connections and take a novel data-driven approach to explore the cortical architecture. We report a dense and consistent map of 358 cortical landmarks, named Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-based Cortical Landmarks (DICCCOLs). Each DICCCOL is defined by group-wise consistent white-matter fiber connection patterns derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. Our results have shown that these 358 landmarks are remarkably reproducible over more than one hundred human brains and possess accurate intrinsically established structural and functional cross-subject correspondences validated by large-scale functional magnetic resonance imaging data. In particular, these 358 cortical landmarks can be accurately and efficiently predicted in a new single brain with DTI data. Thus, this set of 358 DICCCOL landmarks comprehensively encodes the common structural and functional cortical architectures, providing opportunities for many applications in brain science including mapping human brain connectomes, as demonstrated in this work.

Group-wise activation detection in task-based fMRI has been widely used because of its robustness to noises and statistical power to deal with variability of individual brains. However, current group-wise fMRI activation detection methods typically rely on the spatial alignment established by coregistration of individual brains' fMRI images into the same template space, which has difficulty in dealing with the remarkable anatomic variation of different brains. As a consequence, the resulted misalignment among multiple brains could substantially degrade the accuracy and specificity of group-wise fMRI activation detection. To address these challenges, this paper presents a novel methodology to detect group-wise fMRI activation based on a publicly released dense map of DTI-derived structural cortical landmarks, which possess intrinsic correspondences across individuals and populations. The basic idea here is that a first-level general linear model (GLM) analysis is performed on fMRI signals of each corresponding cortical landmark in each individual brain's own space, and then the single-subject effect size of the same landmark from a group of subjects are statistically integrated and assessed at the group level using the mixed-effects model. As a result, the consistently activated cortical landmarks are determined and declared group-wisely in response to external block-based stimuli. Our experimental results demonstrated that the proposed approach can map meaningful group-wise activation patterns on the atlas of cortical landmarks without image registration between subjects and spatial smoothing.

The human brain function involves complex processes with population codes of neuronal activities. Neuroscience research has demonstrated that when representing neuronal activities, sparsity is an important characterizing property. Inspired by this finding, significant amount of efforts from the scientific communities have been recently devoted to sparse representations of signals and patterns, and promising achievements have been made. However, sparse representation of fMRI signals, particularly at the population level of a group of different brains, has been rarely explored yet. In this paper, we present a novel group-wise sparse representation of task-based fMRI signals from multiple subjects via dictionary learning methods. Specifically, we extract and pool task-based fMRI signals for a set of cortical landmarks, each of which possesses intrinsic anatomical correspondence, from a group of subjects. Then an effective online dictionary learning algorithm is employed to learn an over-complete dictionary from the pooled population of fMRI signals based on optimally determined dictionary size. Our experiments have identified meaningful Atoms of Interests (AOI) in the learned dictionary, which correspond to consistent and meaningful functional responses of the brain to external stimulus. Our work demonstrated that sparse representation of group-wise fMRI signals is naturally suitable and effective in recovering population codes of neuronal signals conveyed in fMRI data.

Establishment of structural and functional correspondences across different brains is one of the most fundamental issues in the human brain mapping field. Recently, several multimodal DTI/fMRI studies have demonstrated that consistent white matter fiber connection patterns can predict brain function and represent common brain architectures across individuals and populations, and along this direction, several approaches have been proposed to discover large-scale cortical landmarks with common structural connection profiles. However, an important limitation of previous approaches is that the rich anatomical information such as gyral/sulcal folding patterns has not been incorporated into the landmark discovery procedure yet. In this paper, we present a novel anatomy-guided discovery framework that defines and optimizes a dense map of cortical landmarks that possess group-wise consistent anatomical and fiber connectional profiles. This framework effectively integrates reliable and rich anatomical, morphological, and fiber connectional information for landmark initialization, optimization and prediction, which are formulated and solved as an energy minimization problem. Validation results based on fMRI data demonstrate that the identified 555 cortical landmarks are producible, predictable and exhibit accurate structural and functional correspondences across individuals and populations, offering a universal and individualized brain reference system for neuroimaging research.

Traditional task-based fMRI activation detection methods, e.g., the widely used general linear model (GLM), assume that the brain's hemodynamic responses follow the block-based or event-related stimulus paradigm. Typically, these activation detections are performed voxel-wise independently, and then are usually followed by statistical corrections. Despite remarkable successes and wide adoption of these methods, it remains largely unknown how functional brain regions interact with each other within specific networks during task performance blocks and in the baseline. In this paper, we present a novel algorithmic pipeline to statistically infer and sparsely represent higher-order functional interaction patterns within the working memory network during task performance and in the baseline. Specifically, a collection of higher-order interactions are inferred via the greedy equivalence search (GES) algorithm for both task and baseline blocks. In the next stage, an effective online dictionary learning algorithm is utilized for sparse representation of the inferred higher-order interaction patterns. Application of this framework on a working memory task-based fMRI data reveals interesting and meaningful distributions of the learned sparse dictionary atoms in task and baseline blocks. In comparison with traditional voxel-wise activation detection and recent pair-wise functional connectivity analysis, our framework offers a new methodology for representation and exploration of higher-order functional activities in the brain.

Due to the difficulties in establishing accurate correspondences of brain network nodes across individual subjects, systematic elucidation of possible functional connectivity (FC) alterations in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) compared with normal controls (NC) is a challenging problem. To address this challenge, in this paper, we develop and apply novel predictive models of resting state networks (RSNs) learned from multimodal resting state fMRI (R-fMRI) and DTI data to assess large-scale FC alterations in MCI. Our rationale is that some RSNs in MCI are substantially altered and can hardly be directly compared with those in NC. Instead, structural landmarks derived from DTI data are much more consistent and correspondent across MCI/NC brains, and therefore can be employed to encode RSNs in NC and serve as the predictive models of RSNs for MCI. To derive these predictive models, RSNs in NC are constructed by group-wise ICA clustering and employed to functionally annotate corresponding structural landmarks. Afterwards, these functionally-annotated structural landmarks are predicted in MCI based on DTI data and used to assess FC alterations in MCI. Experimental results demonstrated that the predictive models of RSNs are effective and can comprehensively reveal widespread FC alterations in MCI.

Identification of regions of interest (ROIs) is a fundamental issue in brain network construction and analysis. Recent studies demonstrate that multimodal neuroimaging approaches and joint analysis strategies are crucial for accurate, reliable and individualized identification of brain ROIs. In this paper, we present a novel approach of visual analytics and its open-source software for ROI definition and brain network construction. By combining neuroscience knowledge and computational intelligence capabilities, visual analytics can generate accurate, reliable and individualized ROIs for brain networks via joint modeling of multimodal neuroimaging data and an intuitive and real-time visual analytics interface. Furthermore, it can be used as a functional ROI optimization and prediction solution when fMRI data is unavailable or inadequate. We have applied this approach to an operation span working memory fMRI/DTI dataset, a schizophrenia DTI/resting state fMRI (R-fMRI) dataset, and a mild cognitive impairment DTI/R-fMRI dataset, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of visual analytics. Our experimental results are encouraging., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Studying structural and functional connectivities of human cerebral cortex has drawn significant interest and effort recently. A fundamental and challenging problem arises when attempting to measure the structural and/or functional connectivities of specific cortical networks: how to identify and localize the best possible regions of interests (ROIs) on the cortex? In our view, the major challenges come from uncertainties in ROI boundary definition, the remarkable structural and functional variability across individuals and high nonlinearities within and around ROIs. In this paper, we present a novel ROI prediction framework that localizes ROIs in individual brains based on their learned fiber shape models from multimodal task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. In the training stage, shape models of white matter fibers are learnt from those emanating from the functional ROIs, which are activated brain regions detected from task-based fMRI data. In the prediction stage, functional ROIs are predicted in individual brains based only on DTI data. Our experiment results show that the average ROI prediction error is around 3.94 mm, in comparison with benchmark data provided by working memory and visual task-based fMRI. Our work demonstrated that fiber bundle shape models derived from DTI data are good predictors of functional cortical ROIs.

Quantitative modeling and analysis of structural and functional brain networks based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)/functional MRI (fMRI) data has received extensive interest recently. However, the regularity of these structural or functional brain networks across multiple neuroimaging modalities and across individuals is largely unknown. This paper presents a novel approach to infer group-wise consistent brain sub-networks from multimodal DTI/fMRI datasets via multi-view spectral clustering of cortical networks, which were constructed on our recently developed and extensively validated large-scale cortical landmarks. We applied the proposed algorithm on 80 multimodal structural and functional brain networks of 40 healthy subjects, and obtained consistent multimodal brain sub-networks within the group. Our experiments demonstrated that the derived brain sub-networks have improved inter-modality and inter-subject consistency.

Cortical folding patterns are believed to be good predictors of brain cytoarchitecture and function. For instance, neuroscientists frequently apply their domain knowledge to identify brain Regions of Interests (ROIs) based on cortical folding patterns. However, quantitative mapping of cortical folding pattern and brain function has not been established yet in the literature. This paper presents our initial effort in quantification of the regularity and variability of cortical folding pattern features for working memory ROIs identified by task-based fMRI, which is widely accepted as a standard approach to localize functionally-specialized brain regions. Specifically, we used a set of shape attributes for each ROI base on multiple resolution decomposition of cortical surfaces, and described the meso-scale folding pattern via a polynomial-based approach. We also applied brain atlas label distribution as a global-scale description of ROI folding pattern. Our studies suggest that there is deep-rooted regularity of cortical folding patterns for certain working memory ROIs across subjects, and folding pattern attributes could be useful for the characterization, recognition and prediction of ROIs, if extracted and applied in a proper way.

Study of structural and functional connectivities of the human brain has received significant interest and effort recently. A fundamental question arises when attempting to measure the structural and/or functional connectivities of specific brain networks: how to best identify possible Regions of Interests (ROIs)? In this paper, we present a novel ROI prediction framework that localizes ROIs in individual brains based on learned fiber shape models from multimodal task-based fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data. In the training stage, ROIs are identified as activation peaks in task-based fMRI data. Then, shape models of white matter fibers emanating from these functional ROIs are learned. In addition, ROIs' location distribution model is learned to be used as an anatomical constraint. In the prediction stage, functional ROIs are predicted in individual brains based on DTI data. The ROI prediction is formulated and solved as an energy minimization problem, in which the two learned models are used as energy terms. Our experiment results show that the average ROI prediction error is 3.45 mm, in comparison with the benchmark data provided by working memory task-based fMRI. Promising results were also obtained on the ADNI-2 longitudinal DTI dataset.

Graphical abstract (a) Joint statistic matrix color-coded by TPs, FPs, FNs and TNs, which were obtained from the comparison between the connective matrices derived from tract-tracing database and dMRI data. The FVE brain map, the optimal brain map (out of the three brain maps in the present work) for global connectome, was used to construct connective matrices. The dMRI tractography connective matrix was constructed under the optimal tractography parameters (QA=0.2, Angle=70°) and binarized by the connective strength threshold corresponding to the maximal Youden index. Those parameters also apply to (b)–(i); (b) dMRI tractography fibers corresponding to the TP connections in (a). Fibers corresponding to the same connection have the same color; (c) The connective matrix color-coded by the average local C values on the dMRI fiber tracts corresponding to the TP connections. Pink block highlights those connecting brain sites in frontal lobe; (d) Top 1% connections in term of their large average local C values. Color blocks highlight some of these connections, and (e)-(i) show the corresponding dMRI fibers as well as the brain sites they connect. Dashed blocks indicate that those connections can find their symmetry counterparts in regions the solid blocks highlight. Interpretations of those blocks are found in the text. Highlights • Construction of a large-scale dMRI connectome was evaluated by gold-standard data: neuron tracing data and myelin stain data. • The presented framework is open for more data modalities and tractography models to be easily integrated in this framework. • With optimized tractography parameters and scales, we could substantially trust dMRI with more confidence. Abstract Accurate assessment of connectional anatomy of primate brains can be an important avenue to better understand the structural and functional organization of brains. To this end, numerous connectome projects have been initiated to create a comprehensive map of the connectional anatomy over a large spatial expanse. Tractography based on diffusion MRI (dMRI) data has been used as a tool by many connectome projects in that it is widely used to visualize axonal pathways and reveal microstructural features on living brains. However, the measures obtained from dMRI are indirect inference of microstructures. This intrinsic limitation reduces the reliability of dMRI in constructing connectomes for brains. In this work, we proposed a framework to increase the accuracy of constructing a dMRI-based connectome on macaque brains by integrating meso-scale connective information from tract-tracing data and micro-scale axonal orientation information from myelin stain data. Our results suggest that this integrative framework could advance the mapping accuracy of dMRI based connections and axonal pathways, and demonstrate the prospect of the proposed framework in constructing a large-scale connectome on living primate brains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been extensive studies of intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) in the human brains using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the literature. However, the functional organization of ICNs in macaque brains has been less explored so far, despite growing interests in the field. In this work, we propose a computational framework to identify connectome-scale group-wise consistent ICNs in macaques via sparse representation of whole-brain resting-state fMRI data. Experimental results demonstrate that 70 group-wise consistent ICNs are successfully identified in macaque brains via the proposed framework. These 70 ICNs are interpreted based on two publicly available parcellation maps of macaque brains and our work significantly expand currently known macaque ICNs already reported in the literature. In general, this set of connectome-scale group-wise consistent ICNs can potentially benefit a variety of studies in the neuroscience and brain-mapping fields, and they provide a foundation to better understand brain evolution in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Task-based fMRI activation mapping has been widely used in clinical neuroscience in order to assess different functional activity patterns in conditions such as prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) affected brains and healthy controls. In this paper, we propose a novel, alternative approach of group-wise sparse representation of the fMRI data of multiple groups of subjects (healthy control, exposed non-dysmorphic PAE and exposed dysmorphic PAE) and assess the systematic functional activity differences among these three populations. Specifically, a common time series signal dictionary is learned from the aggregated fMRI signals of all three groups of subjects, and then the weight coefficient matrices (named statistical coefficient map (SCM)) associated with each common dictionary were statistically assessed for each group separately. Through inter-group comparisons based on the correspondence established by the common dictionary, our experimental results have demonstrated that the group-wise sparse coding strategy and the SCM can effectively reveal a collection of brain networks/regions that were affected by different levels of severity of PAE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]