Population-level Task-evoked Functional Connectivity

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive, in-vivo imaging technique essential for measuring brain activity. Functional connectivity is used to study associations between brain regions either at rest or while study participants perform tasks. This paper proposes a rigorous definition of task-evoked functional connectivity at the population level (ptFC). Importantly, our proposed ptFC is interpretable in the context of task-fMRI studies. Two algorithms for estimating ptFC are provided. We present the performance of the proposed algorithms compared to existing functional connectivity estimation approaches using simulations. Lastly, we apply the proposed framework to estimate functional connectivity in a motor-task study from the Human Connectome Project.