Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Nat Neurosci. 2011 Dec 25;15(2):321-7. doi: 10.1038/nn.3001.
A fundamental assumption in neuroscience is that brain structure determines function. Accordingly, functionally distinct regions of cortex should be structurally distinct in their connections to other areas. We tested this hypothesis in relation to face selectivity in the fusiform gyrus. By using only structural connectivity, as measured through diffusion-weighted imaging, we were able to predict functional activation to faces in the fusiform gyrus. These predictions outperformed two control models and a standard group-average benchmark. The structure-function relationship discovered from the initial participants was highly robust in predicting activation in a second group of participants, despite differences in acquisition parameters and stimuli. This approach can thus reliably estimate activation in participants who cannot perform functional imaging tasks and is an alternative to group-activation maps. Additionally, we identified cortical regions whose connectivity was highly influential in predicting face selectivity within the fusiform, suggesting a possible mechanistic architecture underlying face processing in humans.
神经科学的一个基本假设是大脑结构决定功能。相应地，皮质的功能不同区域在与其他区域的连接上应该在结构上有所不同。我们在梭状回的面部选择性方面检验了这一假设。通过仅使用结构连接性，如通过扩散加权成像测量，我们能够预测梭状回中的面孔的功能激活。这些预测优于两个对照模型和标准的组平均基准。从最初的参与者中发现的结构-功能关系在预测第二组参与者的激活时具有高度的稳健性，尽管采集参数和刺激存在差异。因此，这种方法可以可靠地估计无法进行功能成像任务的参与者的激活，并且是组激活图的替代方法。此外，我们确定了在梭状回内预测面孔选择性的连接性具有高度影响力的皮质区域，这表明人类面孔处理的可能的机制结构。
