CAREER: Unique brain structures in human cortex: From structure to function and cognition

人类大脑包含其他哺乳动物大脑中所没有的独特的神经解剖结构和皮质卷曲。研究这些与人脑功能和认知相关的结构尤其重要，因为它提供了关于大脑中区分人类的不同部分的贡献的洞察力。尽管科学家们对人脑的研究已经有一个多世纪了，但我们仍然缺乏关于这些特定于人脑的“独特大脑结构”或UBS的基本知识。主要研究目标是建立坚实的神经解剖学基础，以便更好地了解这些UBS与儿童和成人大脑功能和认知之间的关系。该项目的重点是调查人类大脑皮层中认知和功能表征的个体差异与这些UBS神经解剖特征的个体差异之间的关系。具体地说，这项研究定量地研究了被称为三叉沟或卷曲的皮质折叠中的UBS形状，这是人脑微观结构和功能属性之间的中观联系。这些研究探索了儿童和成人大脑不同脑叶中这些UBS与认知和功能性脑结构的关系，并揭示了人类发育过程中UBS的变化。这项研究的结果提供了第一个全面的瑞银数据库，其中还包括单个参与者的功能和认知测量。通过创建新的分析工具，使用机器学习算法自动快速定义这些瑞银，该项目得到了加速。该项目的一个关键科学和教育组成部分是，新的瑞银数据库可供脑图谱、大脑连通性和功能神经成像领域的神经科学家免费使用，也可以作为一个可推广到高中生和大学生的基于浏览器的交互式学习工具。这些研究加深了我们对人类特定认知方面的神经解剖学基础的理解。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The human brain contains unique neuroanatomical structures and cortical convolutions that are absent in the brains of other mammals. Studying these structures relative to human brain function and cognition is especially important as it provides insight regarding the contributions of distinctive parts of the brain that distinguish humans. Although scientists have been studying the human brain for over a century, we still lack basic knowledge about these “unique brain structures” or UBS, that are specific to the human brain. The main research goals are to build a solid neuroanatomical foundation to better understand the relationship between these UBS relative to brain function and cognition in both children and adults. The focus of this project is to investigate how individual differences in cognition and functional representations in the human cerebral cortex relate to individual differences in neuroanatomical features of these UBS. Specifically, this research quantitatively investigates the UBS shapes in cortical folding called tertiary sulci or convolutions, which serve as a meso-scale link between microstructural and functional properties of the human brain. These studies explore the relationship among these UBS across different lobes of the brain relative to cognition and functional brain architecture in both children and adults and reveal the changes in UBS that arise during human development. The results of this research provide the first comprehensive UBS database which also includes functional and cognitive measures in individual participants. This project is accelerated by creating new analytic tools that employ machine learning algorithms to automatically and rapidly define these UBS. A key scientific and educational component of the project is that the new UBS database is freely available to neuroscientists in the fields of brain mapping, brain connectivity and functional neuroimaging and also as an interactive browser-based learning tool generalizable to high school and college students. These studies deepen our understanding of the neuroanatomical basis for human-specific aspects of cognition.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.