Gradients of structure–function tethering across neocortex

By Bertha Vázquez-Rodríguez, Laura E. Suárez, G. Shafiei, Ross D. Markello, C. Paquola, Patric Hagmann, M. P. van den Heuvel, Boris C. Bernhardt, R. Nathan Spreng, Bratislav Misic. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019

479 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Significance The white matter architecture of brain networks promotes synchrony among neuronal populations, giving rise to richly patterned functional networks. Relating structure and function is a fundamental question for systems neuroscience, but the nature of the relationship is unknown. Here we examine the possibility that structure–function relationships are not uniform in the brain. We find that structure and function are closely aligned in unimodal cortex (primary sensory and motor regions), but diverge in transmodal cortex (default mode and salience networks). The divergence between structure and function closely follows representational and cytoarchitectonic hierarchies, reflecting a macroscale gradient. Our findings suggest structure and function are not uniformly related, but gradually decouple in parallel to this macroscale gradient. The white matter architecture of the brain imparts a distinct signature on neuronal coactivation patterns. Interregional projections promote synchrony among distant neuronal populations, giving rise to richly patterned functional networks. A variety of statistical, communication, and biophysical models have been proposed to study the relationship between brain structure and function, but the link is not yet known. In the present report we seek to relate the structural and functional connection profiles of individual brain areas. We apply a simple multilinear model that incorporates information about spatial proximity, routing, and diffusion between brain regions to predict their functional connectivity. We find that structure–function relationships vary markedly across the neocortex. Structure and function correspond closely in unimodal, primary sensory, and motor regions, but diverge in transmodal cortex, particularly the default mode and salience networks. The divergence between structure and function systematically follows functional and cytoarchitectonic hierarchies. Altogether, the present results demonstrate that structural and functional networks do not align uniformly across the brain, but gradually uncouple in higher-order polysensory areas.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee418e31c1cd3f492a5293ef6ad239436d80353c

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Citations in the corpus

Mapping neurotransmitter systems to the structural and functional organization of the human neocortex (2021, methodology): “We used the spherical projection of the fsaverage surface to define spatial coordinates for each parcel by selecting the coordinates of the vertex closest to the center of the mass of each parcel [135].”
neuromaps: structural and functional interpretation of brain maps (2022, background): “These frameworks differ in how they reassign the medial wall—for which most brain maps contain no data—whether that be by discarding missing data [7, 16], ignoring the medial wall entirely [79], or reassigning missing data to the nearest parcel [80].”