In the coming years, technical improvements will help refine the topography of network degeneration. In addition, a complete understanding of network organization will require knowledge of how brain structure influences brain function, and vice versa. Strictly speaking, functional connectivity is unrelated to anatomy, i.e. functionally connected regions may show no direct structural connection, although the presence of structural connectivity generally implies functional connectivity.139,140 For some brain regions, a functional connection might be established by intermediate regions or through a common source that drives activity in both regions. Efforts are under way to integrate structural and functional connectivity into a common framework. Important advances are expected from a recently funded $40M NIH project, which aims to identify the brain network architecture by using advanced diffusion imaging with fMRI and EEG/MEG recordings (The Human Connectome Project; http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/).
