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Individual connectivity-based parcellations reflect functional properties of human auditory cortex.
Maria Hakonen1,2, Louisa Dahmani1,2, Kaisu Lankinen1,2
1Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital Charlestown, Boston, MA, United States.
Imaging Neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)
|August 12, 2025
Summary
Individual brain scans reveal unique auditory cortex organization. Functional connectivity mapping shows distinct auditory areas, highlighting personal brain differences over typical patterns for better understanding auditory function.
Area of Science:
- Neuroimaging
- Auditory Neuroscience
- Functional Connectivity
Background:
- Traditional neuroimaging studies of the human auditory cortex rely on group analyses, which may obscure individual differences.
- Understanding the precise functional organization of the auditory cortex at an individual level is crucial for personalized neuroscience.
Purpose of the Study:
- To map auditory areas in the human superior temporal cortex (STC) using individual-specific functional network parcellations.
- To assess the reproducibility and interindividual variability of these functional parcellations.
- To investigate whether individual-specific parcellations better reflect task-based auditory function compared to group-level analyses.
Main Methods:
- Utilized 7T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with 1-mm isotropic resolution in 30 participants.
- Employed functional network analysis on resting-state and auditory/audiovisual speech localizer fMRI data.
- Generated and evaluated functional network-based parcellations at individual and group levels using Dice coefficients and Silhouette values.
Main Results:
- Individual-specific parcellations demonstrated moderate intraindividual reproducibility (69-78% for resting-state, 62-73% for resting-state vs. task).
- Interindividual variability in parcellations was significantly larger than intraindividual variability (Dice coefficient: 57%-68%), capturing unique brain organization.
- Individual-specific parcellations showed higher alignment with task response topographies and greater connectional homogeneity within networks.
Conclusions:
- Auditory areas in the superior temporal cortex can be segmented into distinct functional subareas based on functional connectivity.
- Individual-level functional parcellations capture meaningful idiosyncrasies in auditory cortex organization, outperforming group-level approaches.
- Functional connectivity provides a robust method for mapping individual auditory cortex organization, independent of macroanatomical similarities.
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