Functional hierarchy of the human neocortex across the lifespan - PubMed
4 hours ago
- #lifespan development
- #neuroscience
- #brain connectivity
- Functional connectivity in the neocortex is organized by large-scale gradients that link brain topography to cognition.
- Three main axes in adults: sensory-association, visual-somatosensory, and modulation-representation, running from primary sensory to transmodal areas, visual to body-centered systems, and control to default mode networks.
- These gradients describe cortical hierarchies and information processing, but their lifespan evolution was previously unknown.
- A normative reference from birth to age 100 shows nonlinear trajectories: anchored by primary sensory in infancy, differentiating along association and control axes in childhood/adolescence, and dedifferentiating with aging.
- Gradient metrics predict cognitive performance, structure-function coupling varies by axis and age, and transcriptomic signatures are strong early but weaken with age, indicating a transient genetic scaffold.