Distinct gradients of cortical architecture capture visual representations and behavior across the lifespan

The microstructure of cells within the human cerebral cortex varies across the cortical ribbon, where changes in cytoarchitecture and myeloarchitecture are thought to endow each region of the cortex with its unique function. While fine-scale relative to a cell, these changes at the population level impact architectural properties of the cortex measurable in vivo by noninvasive MRI, such as the thickness and myelin content of the cortex. This raises the question of whether or not we can use these in vivo architectural measures to understand cortical organization, function, and development more broadly. Using the human visual cortex as a test bed, we demonstrated two architectural gradients, one in which cytoarchitecture and myeloarchitecture converge and another in which they diverge. These two gradients underlie the structural and functional topography of the visual cortex, even predicting the presence of new visual representations. Moreover, the two gradients show distinct visual behavior relevance and lifespan trajectory. These findings provide a more general framework for understanding the human cortex, showing that architectural gradients are a measurable fingerprint of functional organization and ontogenetic routines in the human brain.