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

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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.