The parcellation organization of cerebellum associated with white-matter functional systems.

Abstract

The cerebellar role in various cognitive functions other than motor coordination has been gradually recognized, while its functional architecture and interaction with white matter functional networks (WM-FNs) remain unclear. The study combined resting-state functional connectivity and K-means clustering methods to obtain nine WM-FNs and seven gray matter functional networks (GM-FNs) by using the test-retest neuroimaging dataset collected from human connectome project. Subsequently, adopting winner-take-all algorithm and two distinct connectivity-based parcellations, we identified two parcellation maps of the cerebellum that corresponded to WM- and GM-FNs, respectively. We observed the cerebellar parcellations with unique spatial distribution pattern, which corresponds to white matter and gray matter functional systems. Additionally, the distinct WM-FNs exhibited high functional connectivity with GM-FNs, which corresponded to the overlapping maps between their cerebellar sub-regions well, indicating that intrinsic functional connectivity has an important constraint on the topological structure of cerebellum. Our finding created a new cerebellar parcellation atlas, advancing the mechanisms' understanding of interaction between cerebellar organization and functional systems.