Brain maps of general cognitive functioning: neuroimaging and neurobiological signatures

In this paper, we attempt to answer two questions: 1) which regions of the human brain, in terms of morphometry, are most strongly related to individual differences in domain-general cognitive functioning (g)? and 2) what are the underlying neurobiological properties of those regions? We meta-analyse vertex-wise g-cortical morphometry (volume, surface area, thickness, curvature and sulcal depth) associations using data from 3 cohorts: the UK Biobank (UKB), Generation Scotland (GenScot), and the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936), meta-analytic N = 38,379 (age range = 44 to 84 years old). These g-morphometry associations vary in magnitude and direction across the cortex (β range = -0.12 to 0.17 across morphometry measures) and show good cross-cohort agreement (mean spatial correlation r = 0.57, SD = 0.18). Then, to address question (2), we bring together existing - and derive new - cortical maps of 33 neurobiological characteristics from multiple modalities (including neurotransmitter receptor densities, gene expression, functional connectivity, metabolism, and cytoarchitectural similarity). We report that these 33 profiles spatially covary along four major dimensions of cortical organisation (accounting for 66.1% of the variance) and these dimensions share spatial patterning with the g-morphometry profiles (p_spin < 0.05 |r| range = 0.22 to 0.55). We provide a compendium of cortex-wide and within-region spatial correlations among general and specific facets of brain cortical organisation and higher order cognitive functioning, which we hope will serve as a framework for analysing other aspects of behaviour-brain MRI associations.