Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: SUMMARY Task fMRI 1 and electrophysiology 2 have revealed distributed, linked cortical patches with shared category preferences (e.g., faces, objects, places) 1,3–5 , smaller than cytoarchitectonic areas. Resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) similarly showed that somato-cognitive action network (SCAN) nodes interleave with effectors (foot, hand, mouth), subdividing the precentral gyrus 6 . Here, using multiple precision functional mapping (PFM) modalities (RSFC, task, lags), we discovered that most of association cortex is organized like face processing and SCAN, with small, discrete patches interconnected into chains. Such patch-chains densely tile prefrontal cortex but are largely absent from primary cortex. Cortico-striatal connectivity is organized such that patches of the same chain connect to the same striatal location. Within chains, infra-slow fMRI signals are ordered in time. RSFC-defined chains align with task fMRI localizers (e.g., visual, motor, pain). Chains are absent at birth and emerge in the first year of life, suggesting their formation is at least partially experience-driven. Cytoarchitectonic areas are subdivided by patches, and patches in the same chain are distributed across different cytoarchitectures. Chains represent parallel ordered processing streams that are separated by information domain and behavioral goals, not cytoarchitectonics. Functional subdivision of architectonics into smaller patches, interlinked to form cross-architecture chains, enable greater parallelization and flexible specialization of processing.
Authors: Evan M. Gordon, Aishwarya Rajesh, Roselyne J. Chauvin, Alyssa Labonte, Babatunde Adeyemo, Ally Dworetsky, Charles J. Lynch, Samuel R. Krimmel, Philip Cho, Anxu Wang, Noah J. Baden, Kristen M. Scheidter, Julia Monk, Athanasia Metoki, Jianxun Ren, Tomoyuki Nishino, Youngeun Park, Emily Rafka, John R. Pruett, Adam Kepecs, Hesheng Liu, Damien A. Fair, Conor Liston, Choong-Wan Woo, Benjamin P. Kay, Scott Marek, Steven E. Petersen, Chad M. Sylvester, Rebecca F. Schwarzlose, Marcus E. Raichle, Timothy O. Laumann, Nico U.F. Dosenbach
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, National Spasmodic Dysphonia Association, Hope Center for Neurological Disorders, National Institutes of Health, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center, McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Awards: G244748725, G3425616478, Precision Functional Mapping in Treatment-Resistant Depression, Neurodevelopmental profiles related to transdiagnostic and disorder-specific symptoms of anxiety and depression, Development and neural mechanisms of repetitive behavior and sensory responsivity in autism, G392608334, G4084953443, G5709754468, Identification of outcome-based sub-populations using deep phenotyping and precision functional mapping across ADHD and ASD, Targeting salience network dysfunction in depression with individualized brain network mapping and TMS, Neural mechanisms of sensory over-responsivity in children with and without ASD, Neurodevelopmental profiles related to transdiagnostic and disorder-specific symptoms of anxiety and depression, G7458042070, Toward Scalable Biomarker-Based Prediction of ASD in High-Risk Infants, G8124703011, A Longitudinal MRI Study Characterizing Very Early Brain Development in Infants with Down Syndrome, MRI Based Presymptomatic Prediction of ASD, G9000052733, G9000091985, G9000112367, G9000280245, Neural mechanisms of sensory over-responsivity in children with and without ASD, Precision Functional Mapping in Treatment-Resistant Depression, A Longitudinal Brain and Behavior Study of Autism From Infancy Through Adolescence, Model-Based Investigation of Aberrant Neural Face Representation in Autism, Precision mapping of Parkinson's Disease pathophysiology in the Somato-Cognitive Action Network’s DBS targets, Individualized Mechanisms of Neural Plasticity and Response to Interventions in Neonates
OpenAlex ID: W7155209511