Data from: Task-related effective connectivity reveals that the cortical rich club gates cortex-wide communication

Higher cognition may require the globally coordinated integration of
specialized brain regions into functional networks. A collection of
structural cortical hubs—referred to as the rich club—has been
hypothesized to support task-specific functional integration. In the
present paper, we use a whole-cortex model to estimate directed
interactions between 68 cortical regions from functional magnetic
resonance imaging activity for four different tasks (reflecting different
cognitive domains) and resting state. We analyze the state-dependent input
and output effective connectivity (EC) of the structural rich club and
relate these to whole-cortex dynamics and network reconfigurations. We
find that the cortical rich club exhibits an increase in outgoing EC
during task performance as compared with rest while incoming connectivity
remains constant. Increased outgoing connectivity targets a sparse set of
peripheral regions with specific regions strongly overlapping between
tasks. At the same time, community detection analyses reveal massive
reorganizations of interactions among peripheral regions, including those
serving as target of increased rich club output. This suggests that while
peripheral regions may play a role in several tasks, their concrete
interplay might nonetheless be task-specific. Furthermore, we observe that
whole-cortex dynamics are faster during task as compared with rest. The
decoupling effects usually accompanying faster dynamics appear to be
counteracted by the increased rich club outgoing EC. Together our findings
speak to a gating mechanism of the rich club that supports fast-paced
information exchange among relevant peripheral regions in a task-specific
and goal-directed fashion, while constantly listening to the whole
network.