Regional patterns of human cortex development correlate with underlying neurobiology.
Leon D LotterAmin SaberiJustine Y HansenBratislav MišićCasey PaquolaGareth J BarkerArun L W BokdeSylvane DesrivieresStephan F MiedlAntoine GrigisHugh GaravanPenny A GowlandAndreas HeinzRüdiger BrühlJean-Luc MartinotMarie-Laure PaillèreEric ArtigesDimitri Papadopoulos OrfanosTomáš PausLuise PoustkaSarah HohmannJuliane Hilde FröhnerMichael N SmolkaNilakshi VaidyaHenrik WalterRobert WhelanGunter Schumannnull nullFrauke NeesTobias BanaschewskiSimon B EickhoffJuergen DukartPublished in: Nature communications (2024)
Human brain morphology undergoes complex changes over the lifespan. Despite recent progress in tracking brain development via normative models, current knowledge of underlying biological mechanisms is highly limited. We demonstrate that human cortical thickness development and aging trajectories unfold along patterns of molecular and cellular brain organization, traceable from population-level to individual developmental trajectories. During childhood and adolescence, cortex-wide spatial distributions of dopaminergic receptors, inhibitory neurons, glial cell populations, and brain-metabolic features explain up to 50% of the variance associated with a lifespan model of regional cortical thickness trajectories. In contrast, modeled cortical thickness change patterns during adulthood are best explained by cholinergic and glutamatergic neurotransmitter receptor and transporter distributions. These relationships are supported by developmental gene expression trajectories and translate to individual longitudinal data from over 8000 adolescents, explaining up to 59% of developmental change at cohort- and 18% at single-subject level. Integrating neurobiological brain atlases with normative modeling and population neuroimaging provides a biologically meaningful path to understand brain development and aging in living humans.
Keyphrases
- resting state
- depressive symptoms
- functional connectivity
- white matter
- gene expression
- endothelial cells
- cerebral ischemia
- optical coherence tomography
- healthcare
- young adults
- spinal cord
- stem cells
- spinal cord injury
- blood brain barrier
- machine learning
- physical activity
- computed tomography
- early life
- neuropathic pain
- electronic health record
- big data
- pluripotent stem cells
- deep learning
- subarachnoid hemorrhage
- bone marrow