Greetings from the MCWG! Wishing you a bright and restful summer!

MCWG members were present at the Brain and Brain PET 2025 conference in Seoul and at the Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) 2025 conference in Brisbane.

We’ve put together some highlights and presentations showcasing recent advances in molecular connectivity.

We hope you enjoy it!

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🧠 Brain and Brain PET 2025 – Coex, Seoul, Republic of Korea, June 01–04, 2025

🧠 Symposium: Current advances in molecular connectivity

Tommaso Volpi, PhD

Sharna Jamadar, PhD

Kristina Herfert, PhD

📝 Featured Abstracts

Metabolic Connectivity From Dynamic [18F]FDG PET Reveals Task-Evoked Brain Network Architecture
Authors: Giulia Vallini, Murray Bruce Reed, Sebastian Klug, Godber Mathis Godbersen, Alessandra Bertoldo, Rupert Lanzenberger, and Andreas Hahn

Exercise Partially Restores Altered Metabolic Connectivity in Parkinson’s Disease
Authors: Connor W. J. Bevington, Erik Reimers, Jess Mckenzie, Sahib Dhaliwal, Teresa Liu-ambrose, A. Jon Stoessl, and Vesna Sossi

Desynchronization Within the Striatal Network in Schizophrenia: Preliminary Results of an FDOPA-PET Study
Authors: Yifan Mayr, Julia Schulz, Melissa Thalhammer, Mattia Veronese, Christian Sorg, Felix Brandl, and Igor Yakushev

🧠 OHBM 2025 – Brisbane, Australia, June 24-27, 2025

🧠 Keynote Presentation
Sharna Jamadar, PhD
Glucodynamics and the metabolic network of the human brain

🧠 Symposium: Relationship between Brain Energy Consumption and Brain Organizations
Organizer: Xin Di

Featured Talks:

• Bridging Glucose Metabolism and Intrinsic Functional Organization of the Human Cortex — Bin Wan

• The brain’s “dark energy” puzzle: How strongly is glucose metabolism linked to resting-state brain activity? — Alessandra Bertoldo
• Simultaneous EEG-PET-MRI identifies temporally coupled, spatially structured hemodynamic and metabolic dynamics across wakefulness and NREM sleep — Jingyuan Chen
• Ageing is associated with a high glucose cost in hub regions of the metabolic network — Hamish Deery
  

🧠 Symposium: Validating brain connectivity measures: integrating biological, statistical, and clinical evidence
Organizers: Chris Habeck, Arianna Sala, Daniel Talmasov, Vesna Sossi
Moderators: James Pang, Felix Hoffstaedter
Featured Talks:

• Brain-wide analysis of functional and physical connectivity using molecular MRI — Alan Jasanoff
• Multiverse analysis in graph-based fMRI research — Andrea Hildebrandt
• Benchmarking methods for mapping functional connectivity in the brain — Zhen-Qi Liu
• Metabolic brain networks in the evaluation of patients with neurodegenerative disorders: rigorous validation done right — Matej Perovnik

🧠 Oral Presentation
Mengyuan Liu
Unveiling the biological substrates of glucose metabolic covariance in the human brain

📝 Featured Abstracts

Single-subject network analysis of FDOPA PET in Parkinson’s disease and Schizophrenia
Authors: Mario Severino, Julia Schubert, Giovanna Nordio, Alessio Giacomel, Rubaida Easmin, Nick P. Lao-Kaim, Pierluigi Selvaggi, Zhilei Xu, Joana B. Pereira, Sameer Jahuar, Paola Piccini, Oliver Howes, Federico Turkheimer, Mattia Veronese

Brain functional-metabolic relationships:rs-fMRI/dynamic [18F]FDG-PET multivariate integration
Authors: Claudia Tarricone, Giulia Vallini, Giorgia Baron, Erica Silvestri, Tommaso Volpi, Andrei G. Vlassenko, Manu S. Goyal, Alessandra Bertoldo

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🧠 New Studies Spotlight

📝 Comparing intra- and inter-individual correlational brain connectivity from functional and structural neuroimaging data
This study examined intra-individual correlations of structural and functional brain measures across an extended time span. The study focused on intra-individual correlations, with the aim to minimize individual differences and investigate how aging and state-like effects contribute to brain connectivity patterns. Intra-individual correlations with inter-individual correlations were compared. Read the full study in Brain Struct Funct.
Key Findings:

• Intra-individual correlations in both regional homogeneity (ReHo) during resting-state and gray matter volumes (GMV) from structural MRI closely resembled resting-state functional connectivity
• ReHo correlations were primarily driven by state-like variability, whereas GMV correlations were mainly influenced by aging 
• Longitudinal Fludeoxyglucose (18F) FDG-PET and MRI scans, replicated these findings
• Intra- and inter-individual correlations were strongly associated with resting-state functional connectivity, with functional measures (i.e., ReHo and FDG-PET) exhibiting greater similarity to resting-state connectivity than structural measures
• Controlling for various factors can enhance the interpretability of brain correlation structures. While inter- and intra-individual correlation patterns showed similarities, accounting for additional variables may improve our understanding of inter-individual connectivity measures

📝 Brain glucodynamic variability is an essential feature of the metabolism-cognition relationship
In this study the temporal variability in glucodynamics, or time-varying glucose use, related to cognition was evaluated in 35 younger and 43 older adults. Read the full study preprint in bioRxiv.
Key Findings:

• Higher glucodynamic variability, and its coherence into metabolic networks, was associated with better cognitive performance
• Lower glucodynamic variability in aging was associated with altered metabolic network efficiency and reduced cognitive performance
• Variability in cerebral glucose metabolism is biologically and functionally relevant to cognition and the network architecture of the brain
• Cognition is influenced by time-varying glucose metabolism and its coherent fluctuations in metabolic networks
• A loss of glucodynamics in aging reduces the efficiency of the metabolic connectome and contributes to reduced cognitive performance

📝 Unveiling functional-metabolic synergy in the healthy brain: multivariate integration of dynamic [18F]FDG-PET and resting-state fMRI
This study employed a multivariate Partial Least Squares Correlation (PLSC) to investigate the functional-metabolic relationship at both nodal and network level with dynamic [18F]FDG-PET data, generated within-individual metabolic connectivity (MC) networks, and functional connectivity (FC) derived from fMRI data. Read the full study in bioRxiv.
Key Findings:

• The glucose delivery is linked with FC strength, particularly when fMRI signal frequencies include greater hemodynamic contributions
• Even stronger functional-metabolic coupling occurs at the network level in the low-frequency fMRI band, with higher MC between sensory/attention and transmodal networks supporting stronger FC within sensory/attention areas

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The MCOS promotes rigor in research and resource sharing. We aim to hold MCOS every third Friday of the month, subject to change due to speaker availability. 

Please stay tuned for MCOS updates and reminders on social media!
Thank you!

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The MCWG Outreach Council invites you to submit announcements or information about papers, conferences, presentations or other events or news related to brain and molecular connectivity as well as any positions available or job opportunities that you wish to publicize and share with the community!

Please submit any material for consideration by the final day of each month using this form – thank you!

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