{"doi":"10.3389/fradi.2025.1686780","title":"H-VIP: quantifying regional topological contributions of the brain network to cognition","abstract":"Introduction: Understanding the role of various brain regions of interest (ROIs) in various cognitive functions or tasks, across healthy or neurodegenerative conditions and multiple degrees of separation, remains a key challenge in neuroscience. Conventional network measures can only capture localized or quasi-localized features of brain ROIs. Topological data analysis (TDA), particularly persistent homology, provides a threshold-free, mathematically rigorous framework for identifying topologically salient features in complex networks. In this paper, we introduce a new metric, the Homological Vertex Importance Profile (H-VIP), designed to assess the relevance of vertices that participate in persistent topological structures (e.g., connected components, cycles or cavities) in brain networks. The H-VIP quantifies the topological features of the network at the ROI (node) level by compressing its higher-order connectivity profile using homological constructs. Methods: Leveraging homological constructs of brain connectomes, we extend two of our previously defined network-level measures-average persistence and persistence entropy-to an ROI-level measure, i.e., the H-VIP. We then applied the H-VIP to two independent datasets: structural connectomes from the Human Connectome Project and functional connectomes from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Persistent homology was computed for each network, and H-VIP scores were derived to evaluate vertex-level contributions. Finally, H-VIP scores were used for the prediction of multiple cognitive measures. Results: In both anatomical and functional brain networks, H-VIP values demonstrate predictive power for various cognitive measures. Notably, the connectivity of the frontal lobe exhibited stronger correlations with cognitive performance than the whole-brain network. Discussion: H-VIP offers a robust and interpretable means to locate, quantify, and visualize region-specific contributions to network's topological, higher-order landscape. Its ability to detect potentially impaired connectivity at the individual level suggests possible applications in personalized medicine for neurological diseases and disorders. Beyond brain connectomics, the H-VIP can be used for other types of complex networks where topological features are of importance, such as financial, social, or ecological networks.","journal":"Frontiers in Radiology","year":2025,"id":584111,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9045,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1497389,"name":"Sandra Vo","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1497390,"name":"Lucy Blank","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":984808,"name":"Frederick Xu","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":477035,"name":"Jiong Chen","orcid":"0000-0001-9389-520X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":579500,"name":"Duy Duong‐Tran","orcid":"0009-0009-4496-7575","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":305923,"name":"Yize Zhao","orcid":"0000-0001-6283-2302","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1068794,"name":"Brielin C. Brown","orcid":"0000-0001-5569-5223","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":49224,"name":"Li Shen","orcid":"0000-0002-5443-0503","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":984063,"name":"Sumita Garai","orcid":"0000-0001-6035-4837","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":42,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:59:11.978098Z","pmid":"41427113","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}