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Integrated uncertainty modulates frontoparietal hub connectivity profiles for flexible control

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Stephanie Leach¹, Shannon Stokes¹, Hannah Hollow¹, Jiefeng Jiang¹, Kai Hwang¹; ¹University of Iowa

To flexibly guide behavior, the human brain must integrate multiple streams of information from diverse external and internal information sources. Frontoparietal hub regions have long been assumed to be involved in integrative functions due to their extensive connectivity with other regions/networks. Recent work from our lab suggests frontoparietal hubs read out and resolve integrated uncertainty in the service of flexible, goal directed behavior (Leach et al., 2025). What remains unknown is how frontoparietal hubs leverage this integrated uncertainty to influence communication between distributed brain systems. In the current study, we developed, validated, and applied a novel beta-gPPI analysis to answer this question. In short, this beta-gPPI method combines two functional connectivity measures, gPPI and beta series, with a temporal lag component to assess temporal directionality, allowing for directional inferences in the observed connectivity profiles. To validate this approach, we first conducted simulations demonstrating that this method is capable of detecting directional interactions obscured by noise (power > .80; false positive rate < .05). Next, we confirmed detection of expected motor and task region connectivity profiles in the dataset. Finally, we extended this approach to assess how frontoparietal hubs utilize integrated uncertainty to flexibly guide behavior. Findings suggests that frontoparietal hubs leverage uncertainty arising from integration (cue time-lock) to first bias task execution (probe time-lock) and then bias prediction error processes (feedback time-lock). Altogether, these results show that frontoparietal hubs utilize integrated uncertainty to dynamically configure functional interactions between brain systems for flexible, goal directed behavior.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Goal maintenance & switching