| Abstract | Take a game of chess. How does the brain achieve the complex cognition required in such a situation? Brain functional networks, i.e., sets of interacting brain regions, are key. Further, disruptions of brain networks likely underlie cognitive impairments in brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Electroencephalography (EEG), Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) are used to reveal these brain networks. However, the large-scale brain mechanisms generating these networks remain poorly understood, hampering neurophysiological understanding of cognitive functions and pathophysiological understanding of brain disorders. In this talk, I will describe the first project of a research programme I recently initiated, to better understand the structure-function relationship underlying brain networks. In this project, I studied the role of inter-regional conduction delays in generating large-scale brain networks of phase synchronization. To do this, I used methods from Simulation Based Inference (SBI) to compare three Brain Computational Models (BCMs) representing different biologically plausible hypotheses on the role of delays, based on empirical MEG data. The results revealed distance-dependent conduction delays to underlie large-scale networks of phase synchronization, thus advancing understanding on their structure-function relationship. |