1. Neuroscience

Topographic gradients of intrinsic dynamics across neocortex

  1. Golia Shafiei  Is a corresponding author
  2. Ross D Markello
  3. Reinder Vos de Wael
  4. Boris C Bernhardt
  5. Ben D Fulcher
  6. Bratislav Misic  Is a corresponding author
  1. McGill University, Canada
  2. University of Sydney, Australia
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.62116
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  1. Golia Shafiei
  2. Ross D Markello
  3. Reinder Vos de Wael
  4. Boris C Bernhardt
  5. Ben D Fulcher
  6. Bratislav Misic
(2020)
Topographic gradients of intrinsic dynamics across neocortex
eLife 9:e62116.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.62116
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Abstract

The intrinsic dynamics of neuronal populations are shaped by both microscale attributes and macroscale connectome architecture. Here we comprehensively characterize the rich temporal patterns of neural activity throughout the human brain. Applying massive temporal feature extraction to regional haemodynamic activity, we systematically estimate over 6,000 statistical properties of individual brain regions' time-series across the neocortex. We identify two robust spatial gradients of intrinsic dynamics, one spanning a ventromedial-dorsolateral axis and dominated by measures of signal autocorrelation, and the other spanning a unimodal-transmodal axis and dominated by measures of dynamic range. These gradients reflect spatial patterns of gene expression, intracortical myelin and cortical thickness, as well as structural and functional network embedding. Importantly, these gradients are correlated with patterns of meta-analytic functional activation, differentiating cognitive versus affective processing and sensory versus higher-order cognitive processing. Altogether, these findings demonstrate a link between microscale and macroscale architecture, intrinsic dynamics, and cognition.

Data availability

All data used in this study is publicly available. Detailed information about the datasets is available in the manuscript.

The following previously published data sets were used

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Golia Shafiei

    McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
    For correspondence
    golia.shafiei@mail.mcgill.ca
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2036-5571

  2. Ross D Markello

    McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1057-1336

  3. Reinder Vos de Wael

    McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  4. Boris C Bernhardt

    McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Ben D Fulcher

    School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3003-4055

  6. Bratislav Misic

    McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
    For correspondence
    bratislav.misic@mcgill.ca
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0307-2862

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

  • Golia Shafiei

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN #017-04265)

  • Bratislav Misic

Canada First Research Excellence Fund, awarded to McGill University for the Healthy Brains for Healthy Lives initiative

  • Bratislav Misic

Canada Research Chairs Program

  • Bratislav Misic

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Informed consent and consent to publish were obtained during data acquisition process (all data used in this study were obtained from publicly available datasets).

Reviewing Editor

  1. Lucina Q Uddin, University of Miami, United States

Publication history

  1. Received: August 14, 2020
  2. Accepted: December 16, 2020
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: December 17, 2020 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: December 29, 2020 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2020, Shafiei et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Golia Shafiei
  2. Ross D Markello
  3. Reinder Vos de Wael
  4. Boris C Bernhardt
  5. Ben D Fulcher
  6. Bratislav Misic
(2020)
Topographic gradients of intrinsic dynamics across neocortex
eLife 9:e62116.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.62116

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