The regional variation of laminar thickness in the human isocortex is related to cortical hierarchy and interregional connectivity

Amin Saberi, Casey Paquola, Konrad Wagstyl, Meike D Hettwer, Boris C Bernhardt, Simon B Eickhoff and Sofie L Valk

PLOS Biology, 2023, vol. 21, issue 11, 1-29

Abstract: The human isocortex consists of tangentially organized layers with unique cytoarchitectural properties. These layers show spatial variations in thickness and cytoarchitecture across the neocortex, which is thought to support function through enabling targeted corticocortical connections. Here, leveraging maps of the 6 cortical layers based on 3D human brain histology, we aimed to quantitatively characterize the systematic covariation of laminar structure in the cortex and its functional consequences. After correcting for the effect of cortical curvature, we identified a spatial pattern of changes in laminar thickness covariance from lateral frontal to posterior occipital regions, which differentiated the dominance of infra- versus supragranular layer thickness. Corresponding to the laminar regularities of cortical connections along cortical hierarchy, the infragranular-dominant pattern of laminar thickness was associated with higher hierarchical positions of regions, mapped based on resting-state effective connectivity in humans and tract-tracing of structural connections in macaques. Moreover, we show that regions with similar laminar thickness patterns have a higher likelihood of structural connections and strength of functional connections. In sum, here we characterize the organization of laminar thickness in the human isocortex and its association with cortico-cortical connectivity, illustrating how laminar organization may provide a foundational principle of cortical function.The human isocortex consists of tangentially organized layers with unique cytoarchitectural properties. This study shows that the regional variation of high-resolution histology-based laminar thickness profiles in the human isocortex is associated with the cortical connectome and hierarchical organization.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002365 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file ... 02365&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pbio00:3002365

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002365

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Biology from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosbiology ().