Temporal metastates are associated with differential patterns of time-resolved connectivity, network topology, and attention

Little is currently known about the coordination of neural activity over longitudinal timescales and how these changes relate to behavior. To investigate this issue, we used resting-state fMRI data from a single individual to identify the presence of two distinct temporal states that fluctuated over the course of 18 mo. These temporal states were associated with distinct patterns of time-resolved blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) connectivity within individual scanning sessions and also related to significant alterations in global efficiency of brain connectivity as well as differences in self-reported attention. These patterns were replicated in a separate longitudinal dataset, providing additional supportive evidence for the presence of fluctuations in functional network topology over time. Together, our results underscore the importance of longitudinal phenotyping in cognitive neuroscience.