The individuality of shape asymmetries of the human cerebral cortex

Asymmetries of the cerebral cortex are found across diverse phyla and are particularly pronounced in humans, with important implications for brain function and disease. However, many prior studies have confounded asymmetries due to size with those due to shape. Here, we introduce a novel approach to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published ineLife Vol. 11
Main Authors Chen, Yu-Chi, Arnatkevičiūtė, Aurina, McTavish, Eugene, Pang, James C, Chopra, Sidhant, Suo, Chao, Fornito, Alex, Aquino, Kevin M
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England eLife Science Publications, Ltd 05.10.2022
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Subjects
Asymmetry
Brain
Cerebral Cortex
Cognition
Computational and Systems Biology
cortical asymmetry
Environmental effects
Functional Laterality
Handedness
Heritability
Humans
Hypotheses
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Medical research
Medicine, Experimental
Morphology
Neuroimaging
Neuroscience
Sexual Behavior
Sexual dimorphism
spectral shape analysis
Stochasticity
subject identifiability
Wavelength
computational biology
systems biology
cortical asymmetry
neuroscience
none
subject identifiability
spectral shape analysis
heritability
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Summary:Asymmetries of the cerebral cortex are found across diverse phyla and are particularly pronounced in humans, with important implications for brain function and disease. However, many prior studies have confounded asymmetries due to size with those due to shape. Here, we introduce a novel approach to characterize asymmetries of the whole cortical shape, independent of size, across different spatial frequencies using magnetic resonance imaging data in three independent datasets. We find that cortical shape asymmetry is highly individualized and robust, akin to a cortical fingerprint, and identifies individuals more accurately than size-based descriptors, such as cortical thickness and surface area, or measures of inter-regional functional coupling of brain activity. Individual identifiability is optimal at coarse spatial scales (~37 mm wavelength), and shape asymmetries show scale-specific associations with sex and cognition, but not handedness. While unihemispheric cortical shape shows significant heritability at coarse scales (~65 mm wavelength), shape asymmetries are determined primarily by subject-specific environmental effects. Thus, coarse-scale shape asymmetries are highly personalized, sexually dimorphic, linked to individual differences in cognition, and are primarily driven by stochastic environmental influences.
Bibliography:These authors contributed equally to this work.
ISSN:2050-084X
2050-084X
DOI:10.7554/eLife.75056