Resting State

What is the Resting State?

The resting state refers to a baseline condition of brain activity that occurs when an individual is awake, alert, and not performing a prescribed experimental task; spontaneous thought and sensory processing still occur. In resting-state fMRI, the brain exhibits low-frequency BOLD-signal fluctuations related indirectly to neural activity that are thought to reflect the intrinsic functional organization of the brain.

Here, resting state describes the brain during an experiment without a prescribed task. It is different from the resting state of an individual neuron.

Resting State Networks

• Default Mode Network (DMN)

  The DMN is a network of brain regions that are highly active and interconnected during the resting state and often show reduced activity during externally demanding tasks, although this is not true of every task. It includes the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, and lateral parietal cortex. The DMN is thought to be involved in self-referential thinking, mind-wandering, and autobiographical memory retrieval.

• Salience Network

  The salience network is a resting state network that includes the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex. It plays a critical role in detecting and filtering relevant information from the environment and coordinating the activity of other brain networks to respond to important stimuli.

• Central Executive Network (CEN)

  The CEN is a network of brain regions, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the posterior parietal cortex, that are involved in higher cognitive functions, such as working memory, attention, and cognitive control. The CEN shows increased activity during task performance and is thought to be involved in goal-directed behavior and the allocation of attentional resources.

Research Applications

• Resting State Functional Connectivity

  Resting state functional connectivity is a research method that examines the temporal correlations between the spontaneous activity of different brain regions during the resting state. This approach allows researchers to investigate the intrinsic functional organization of the brain and identify alterations in functional connectivity that may be associated with various neurological and psychiatric disorders.

• Resting State fMRI

  Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) is a non-invasive neuroimaging technique used to measure brain activity during the resting state. By analyzing the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal fluctuations over time, researchers can examine the functional connectivity between different brain regions and study the brain's intrinsic functional organization.

• Clinical Applications

  Resting state neuroimaging has been used to investigate the neural underpinnings of various neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, autism spectrum disorder, depression, and schizophrenia. By identifying alterations in resting state functional connectivity, researchers can study group-level associations, but such differences do not automatically provide a validated individual diagnostic test.

Sources and evidence

• Stephen M. Smith and colleagues: Resting-state fMRI in the Human Connectome Project. BOLD correlations are indirect and vulnerable to motion and other confounds.