Neuroimaging Connectivity Analyses and Their AppLication in Psychiatric Research

The brain is conceptuaLized as a network of neurons and groups of neurons where each region can participate in many sets of functions. The connections between regions, which include not only physical connections but also statistically correlated activations and causal activations, are referred to as brain connectivity. Neuroimaging connectivity plays a crucial role in understanding how brain regions function together in networks, which in turn yields a better understanding of brain abnormaLities and psychiatric disorders. There is abundant evidence from imaging studies that demonstrates abnormaLities in connectivity in the brains of patients with psychiatric disorders. Therefore, this article discusses imaging-based functional, resting-state, meta-analytic, and effective connectivity and the different ways these methods of analysis can be implemented to study various psychiatric disorders. It also provides a review of several common disorders and what connectivity analysis has revealed about them and their effects in the brain.