Neuroanatomical and functional dissociations between variably present anterior lateral prefrontal sulci

Abstract

The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is an evolutionarily expanded region in humans that is critical for numerous complex functions, many of which are largely hominoid-specific. While recent work shows that the presence or absence of specific sulci in anterior LPFC is associated with cognitive performance across age groups, it is unknown whether the presence of these structures relates to individual differences in the functional organization of LPFC. To fill this gap in knowledge, we leveraged multimodal neuroimaging data from 72 young adult humans aged 22-36 and show that dorsal and ventral components of the paraintermediate frontal sulcus (pimfs) present distinct morphological (surface area), architectural (thickness and myelination), and functional (resting-state connectivity networks) properties. We further contextualize the pimfs components within classic and modern cortical parcellations. Taken together, the dorsal and ventral pimfs components mark transitions in anatomy and function in LPFC, across metrics and parcellations. These results emphasize that the pimfs is a critical structure to consider when examining individual differences in the anatomical and functional organization of LPFC and highlight the importance of considering individual anatomy when investigating structural and functional features of the cortex.

Sulcal variability in anterior lateral prefrontal cortex contributes to variability in reasoning performance among young adults

“…Notably, the studies covered different age ranges-ages 22-36 vs. 6-18-and also used different cognitive measures [our previous study used WISC-IV Matrix Reasoning task (Wechsler 1949) and the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery Cross Out task (Brown et al 2012)]. Thus, taken together, these findings establish a robust anatomical-behavioral association that does not generalize to all forms of cognition or to all sulci, which converges with the observed functional dissociation between neighboring sulcal components (Willbrand et al 2023a).…”

“…We found that children and adults with left pimfs-v had on average 28% and 34% higher reasoning scores, respectively, than those without it. In the same sample of younger adults, we recently showed that pimfs-v and pimfs-d exhibited different patterns of large-scale resting-state functional connectivity, whereby the pimfs-v was associated with control-related networks and the pimfs-d was associated with attention-related networks (Willbrand et al 2023a). Thus, the present behavioral dissociation between these sulcal components likely stems from participation in different brain networks and cognitive functions.…”

Updating the sulcal landscape of the human lateral parieto-occipital junction provides anatomical, functional, and cognitive insights

“…To determine if the slocs-v is functionally distinct from surrounding sulci, we generated functional connectivity profiles using recently developed analyses [12,13,53]. First, we used resting-state network parcellations for each individual participant from Kong and colleagues [54],…”