Large-scale functional coactivation patterns reflect the structural connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is crucial for social and affective neuroscience but is functionally heterogeneous.
• Understanding the link between MPFC's functional networks and its structural connectivity is key to deciphering its role in psychological processes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how functional coactivation patterns in the MPFC are mirrored by its underlying structural connectivity.
• To determine the extent to which neuroanatomical connectivity shapes functional network communication within the MPFC.

Main Methods:

• Combined diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) and probabilistic tractography.
• Utilized large-scale meta-analysis of functional coactivation data.
• Employed unsupervised machine learning for comparing structural and functional parcellations.

Main Results:

• Found significant congruence between structural and functional parcellations of the MPFC at multiple spatial scales.
• Observed high voxel-to-voxel similarity between structural connectivity and functional coactivation across most MPFC subregions.
• Identified distinct subregions within the MPFC associated with affective processing and social cognition.

Conclusions:

• Meta-analytically derived functional coactivation patterns are substantially constrained by underlying neuroanatomical connectivity.
• Provides convergent evidence for distinct functional specializations within the MPFC for social and affective domains.
• Highlights the importance of structural connectivity in shaping functional network organization within the medial prefrontal cortex.