Publications by authors named "Tommaso Menara"

Network control theory is increasingly used to profile the brain's energy landscape via simulations of neural dynamics. This approach estimates the control energy required to simulate the activation of brain circuits based on structural connectome measured using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging, thereby quantifying those circuits' energetic efficiency. The biological basis of control energy, however, remains unknown, hampering its further application.

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Oscillatory activity is ubiquitous in natural and engineered network systems. The interaction scheme underlying interdependent oscillatory components governs the emergence of network-wide patterns of synchrony that regulate and enable complex functions. Yet, understanding, and ultimately harnessing, the structure-function relationship in oscillator networks remains an outstanding challenge of modern science.

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Dynamical brain state transitions are critical for flexible working memory but the network mechanisms are incompletely understood. Here, we show that working memory performance entails brain-wide switching between activity states using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy controls and individuals with schizophrenia, pharmacological fMRI, genetic analyses and network control theory. The stability of states relates to dopamine D1 receptor gene expression while state transitions are influenced by D2 receptor expression and pharmacological modulation.

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Context: Large multi-site neuroimaging datasets have significantly advanced our quest to understand brain-behavior relationships and to develop biomarkers of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Yet, such data collections come at a cost, as the inevitable differences across samples may lead to biased or erroneous conclusions.

Objective: We aim to validate the estimation of individual brain network dynamics fingerprints and appraise sources of variability in large resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) datasets by providing a novel point of view based on data-driven dynamical models.

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Optimizing direct electrical stimulation for the treatment of neurological disease remains difficult due to an incomplete understanding of its physical propagation through brain tissue. Here, we use network control theory to predict how stimulation spreads through white matter to influence spatially distributed dynamics. We test the theory's predictions using a unique dataset comprising diffusion weighted imaging and electrocorticography in epilepsy patients undergoing grid stimulation.

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This paper describes the comparison between two drug control strategies to hemophilia A. To emulate blood clotting and the pathological condition of hemophilia, a mathematical model composed by 14 ordinary differential equations is considered. We adopt a variable structure non-linear PID approach and a Model Predictive Control in order to control the dosage of procoagulant factor used in the treatment of hemophiliac patient.

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