Brain maps of general cognitive function and spatial correlations with neurobiological cortical profiles

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Human Brain Imaging

Background:

• Individual differences in general cognitive functioning (g) are heritable and crucial for life outcomes.
• Understanding the neurobiological basis of cognitive abilities is a key challenge in neuroscience.
• Cortical morphometry (e.g., volume, surface area, thickness) and neurobiological properties are potential correlates of cognitive variation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify specific human brain regions, based on morphometry, associated with individual differences in general cognitive functioning (g).
• To investigate the underlying neurobiological properties of these identified brain regions.
• To create openly accessible cortical maps and a compendium of brain organization and cognitive function correlations.

Main Methods:

• Meta-analysis of vertex-wise general cognitive functioning (g) and cortical morphometry (volume, surface area, thickness, curvature, sulcal depth) associations.
• Utilized data from three cohorts: UK Biobank (UKB), Generation Scotland (GenScot), and Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936), with a meta-analytic N = 38,379.
• Integrated existing and derived cortical maps of 33 neurobiological characteristics (e.g., receptor densities, gene expression, functional connectivity) to identify underlying organizational dimensions.

Main Results:

• Identified significant associations between g-morphometry across the cortex, with good cross-cohort agreement (mean spatial correlation r = 0.57).
• Discovered that 33 neurobiological profiles spatially covary along four major dimensions of cortical organization, explaining 65.9% of the variance.
• These organizational dimensions underpin the spatial patterning of MRI-cognitive associations (significant |r| range = 0.21 to 0.56).

Conclusions:

• Cortical morphometry and specific neurobiological properties are spatially organized and significantly associated with general cognitive ability (g).
• The findings provide a framework for understanding the neurobiological scaffolding of cognitive function and behavior-brain MRI associations.
• Openly accessible data and compendia will facilitate future research in cognitive neuroscience and individual differences.