Temporal metastates are associated with differential patterns of time-resolved connectivity, network topology, and attention

Significance The brain is an inherently dynamic organ; however, the manner in which the brain changes over longitudinal time remains poorly understood. An understanding of these dynamic mechanisms is critical for understanding normal childhood development and aging as well as neurological and psychiatric disease states. Here, we leverage data collected in a single individual over the course of 2 y to investigate changes in brain organization over time. In doing so, we show intermittent fluctuations in brain network configuration that were associated with separable patterns of time-resolved interactions between neural regions. The states also directly relate to alterations in whole-brain information processing and self-reported attention. In addition, the patterns that we observed were replicated in a separate longitudinal dataset.