Towards the Virtual Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Patient: Inferring Cortical Excitability through Whole-Brain Dynamical Modeling

ALS patients show significant, directionally consistent changes in neuronal avalanche transition matrices, and simulation-based inference estimates higher recurrent excitation than controls.

• Why it matters: The study addresses how local cortical excitability imbalance shapes distributed whole-brain dynamics in ALS, where hyperexcitability is widespread but mechanistic links remain unclear.
• What they did: It combined source-reconstructed resting-state magnetoencephalography with tractography-informed reduced Wong-Wang whole-brain modeling, then used simulation-based inference to jointly estimate recurrent excitation and global coupling from individual empirical feature vectors.
• The result: Inferred recurrent excitation is higher in ALS than in healthy controls, with regional modeling indicating more pronounced hyperexcitability in motor-frontal regions, supporting enhanced excitability as a candidate mechanism for altered avalanche propagation.

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