Channel Capacity for Time-Resolved Effective Connectivity in Functional Neuroimaging

Understanding how brain regions influence one another over time is a central goal of neuroscience. However, existing approaches to effective connectivity often involve tradeoffs among mechanistic interpretability, computational scalability, and time-resolved estimation. Here, we introduce information channel capacity, a model-based measure of directed information transfer between brain regions, and combine it with a sliding-window framework to estimate time-varying directional interactions. We validate channel capacity across multimodal neuroimaging datasets in humans and rodents because this breadth is needed to test three complementary properties that no single dataset can establish alone: sensitivity to evoked information transfer, specificity against false-positive directional effects, and the ability to capture meaningful temporal variability in directed brain-network interactions. Human motor-task fMRI tests sensitivity, showing that channel capacity detects task-related increases in directed interactions and stronger directional effects during task than during rest in motor-related regions. Concurrent rat local field potential (LFP)-fMRI tests specificity, showing minimal spurious directional asymmetry relative to scan-to-scan variability and consistent temporal dynamics across neural and BOLD signals. Mouse Ca2+-fMRI tests temporal variability, showing that channel-capacity patterns identify reproducible connectivity states and transitions over time. Together, these results establish channel capacity as a physiologically grounded framework for measuring dynamic directional interactions across species and neuroimaging modalities.