Ricchi Ilaria, Santoro Andrea, Kinany Nawal, Landelle Caroline, Khatibi Ali, Vahdat Shahabeddin, Doyon Julien, Barry Robert L, Van De Ville Dimitri
Neuro-X Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland.
Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jun 2:2025.05.30.656545. doi: 10.1101/2025.05.30.656545.
Functional connectivity (FC) patterns in the human brain form a reproducible, individual-specific "fingerprint" that allows reliable identification of the same participant across scans acquired over different sessions. While brain fingerprinting is robust across healthy individuals and neuroimaging modalities, little is known about whether the fingerprinting principle extends beyond the brain. Here, we used multiple spinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets acquired at different sites to examine whether a fingerprint can be revealed from FCs of the cervical region of the human spinal cord. Our results demonstrate that the functional organisation of the cervical spinal cord also exhibits individual-specific properties, suggesting the potential existence of a spine-print within the same acquisition session. This study provides the first evidence of a spinal cord connectivity fingerprint, underscoring the importance of considering a more comprehensive view of the entire central nervous system. Eventually, these spine-specific signatures could contribute to identifying individualized biomarkers of neuronal connectivity, with potential clinical applications in neurology and neurosurgery.
人类大脑中的功能连接（FC）模式形成了一种可重复的、个体特异性的“指纹”，能够在不同时间段采集的扫描中可靠地识别同一参与者。虽然大脑指纹识别在健康个体和神经成像模式中都很稳健，但对于指纹识别原理是否能扩展到大脑之外却知之甚少。在这里，我们使用在不同地点采集的多个脊髓功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据集，来研究是否能从人类脊髓颈部区域的功能连接中揭示出一种指纹。我们的结果表明，颈髓的功能组织也表现出个体特异性特征，这表明在同一采集过程中可能存在脊柱指纹。这项研究提供了脊髓连接指纹的首个证据，强调了从更全面的视角看待整个中枢神经系统的重要性。最终，这些脊柱特异性特征可能有助于识别神经元连接的个体化生物标志物，在神经病学和神经外科领域具有潜在的临床应用价值。
