Concurrent mapping of brain ontogeny and phylogeny within a common connectivity space

Abstract

Developmental and evolutionary effects on brain organisation are complex, yet linked, as evidenced by the striking correspondence in cortical expansion changes. However, it is still not possible to study concurrently the ontogeny and phylogeny of cortical areal connections, which is arguably more relevant to brain function than allometric changes. Here, we propose a novel framework that allows the integration of connectivity maps from humans (adults and neonates) and non-human primates (macaques) onto a common space. We use white matter bundles to anchor the definition of the common space and employ the uniqueness of the areal connection patterns to these bundles to probe areal specialisation. This enables us to quantitatively study divergences and similarities in cortical connectivity over both evolutionary and developmental scales. It further allows us to map brain maturation trajectories, including the effect of premature birth, and to translate cortical atlases between diverse brains.

A connectomics-based taxonomy of mammals

“…A variety of emerging methods are contributing to further resolve correspondence between brain regions across species, facilitating fine-grained comparisons at the level of individual regions. These methods implement regional comparisons based on different data modalities including measures of cytoarchitecture ( J Garey, 1999 ; Bianchi et al, 2013 ), receptor distribution ( Levant, 1998 ), functional and structural connectivity fingerprints ( Passingham et al, 2002 ; Mars et al, 2016 ), patterns of gene expression ( Warrington et al, 2022 ; Beauchamp et al, 2022 ), and macroscale gradients of functional activation ( Buckner and Margulies, 2019 ).…”

“…Adopting a harmonized imaging protocol in a large number of mammalian species facilitates a rigorous quantitative comparison of neural circuits. Central to this are network analytic methods that map connectomes to a common space and quantify similarities across local and global levels of organization ( de Lange et al, 2014 ; de Lange et al, 2016 ; Bassett and Sporns, 2017 ; Mars et al, 2018b , Mars et al, 2021 ; Warrington et al, 2022 ). By comprehensively charting taxonomies of connectome architectures, we may uncover the principles that govern the wiring of neural circuits ( Avena-Koenigsberger et al, 2015 ).…”

A connectomics-based taxonomy of mammals

“…Adopting a harmonized imaging protocol in a large number of mammalian species facilitates a rigorous quantitative comparison of neural circuits. Central to this are network analytic methods that map connectomes to a common space, and quantify similarities across local and global levels of organization [16, 31, 32, 59, 61, 100]. By comprehensively charting taxonomies of connectome architectures we may uncover the principles that govern the wiring of neural circuits [4].…”