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Precision Estimates of Parallel Distributed Association Networks: Evidence for Domain Specialization and Implications
Lauren M DiNicola1, Randy L Buckner1,2,3
1Department of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA.
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences
|July 15, 2021
Summary
Human cognitive abilities like reasoning and language emerge from specialized brain networks. Evolutionary expansion and developmental fractionation of association cortex led to these distinct, spatially distributed networks.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Science
- Evolutionary Biology
Background:
- Human cognition, including reasoning, language, and imagination, relies on association regions in the brain.
- These regions show significant evolutionary expansion and extended postnatal development in humans.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the organization of specialized neural networks within expanded human association cortex.
- To propose a hypothesis explaining the evolution and development of these distinct cognitive functions.
Main Methods:
- Utilized precision mapping within individuals to identify network organization in association cortex.
- Analyzed the spatial distribution and anatomical separation of networks for language, social, and mnemonic/spatial functions.
Main Results:
- Expanded association zones contain multiple specialized networks with distributed motifs.
- These networks are anatomically separated, not converging into multi-domain hubs.
- Distinct regions in rostral prefrontal and temporal cortex host these specialized networks.
Conclusions:
- Proposed the expansion-fractionation-specialization (EFS) hypothesis.
- Suggests evolutionary expansion allowed a primordial network to fractionate into specialized networks.
- Human development may mirror this evolutionary process of fractionation and specialization.
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