Commentary: BRAIN NETWORKS. Correlated Gene Expression Supports Synchronous Activity in Brain Networks. Science 348, 1241–4

Spiro P. Pantazatos, Xinyi Li

A recent report claims that functional brain networks defined with resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be recapitulated with correlated gene expression (i.e., high within-network tissue-tissue "strength fraction," SF) (Richiardi et al., 2015). However, the authors do not adequately control for spatial proximity. We replicated their main analysis, performed a more effective adjustment for spatial proximity, and tested whether "null networks" (i.e., clusters with center coordinates randomly placed throughout cortex) also exhibit high SF. Removing proximal tissue-tissue correlations by Euclidean distance, as opposed to removing correlations within arbitrary tissue labels as in Richiardi et al. (2015), reduces within-network SF to no greater than null. Moreover, randomly placed clusters also have significantly high SF, indicating that high within-network SF is entirely attributable to proximity and is unrelated to functional brain networks defined by resting-state fMRI. We discuss why additional validations in the original article are invalid and/or misleading and suggest future directions.