Multivariate Information Theory Uncovers Synergistic Subsystems of the Human Cerebral Cortex

Understand

One of the most well-established tools for modeling the brain as a complex system is the functional connectivity network, which examines the correlations between pairs of interacting brain regions.

• While powerful, the network model is limited by the restriction that only pairwise dependencies are visible and potentially higher-order structures are missed.
• In this work, we explore how multivariate information theory can reveal higher-order, synergistic dependencies in the human brain.
• Using the O-information, a measure of whether the structure of a system is redundancy- or synergy-dominated, we show that synergistic subsystems are widespread in the human brain.