What does this part of the brain do?

尽管几十年来的神经成像工作努力将大脑的拓扑组织与现有的人类行为分类学联系起来，但行为功能与神经系统之间的关系仍然难以捉摸。许多研究使用功能磁共振成像来检查大脑的哪个区域被特定的行为任务激活。在较小程度和系统的方式上，其他研究已经检查了不同受试者或病理的行为变异性与灰质体积（GM）的关系，假设如果一个给定的大脑区域参与特定的行为功能，该区域的GM应该与特定任务或针对该功能的（临床）问卷的表现或分数相一致。此外，必须承认，很可能没有一个大脑区域可以单独支持特定的行为功能。因此，识别那些可以从一个区域的结构和功能连接模式预测的表型可能为其功能表征提供另一种选择。然而，这些关于功能表征的不同概念从未被比较过，以检查它们如何收敛或相互补充。因此，通过系统的评估来填补这一空白代表了这项工作的主要目标。实现大量不同的功能推理方法，将它们应用于异质区域集，并比较随后的特征，将为未来的大脑映射工作奠定重要基础，为如何回答系统神经科学中的关键问题“大脑的这一部分是做什么的？”提供客观参考。

Despite decades of neuroimaging work striving to relate the topological organization of the brain to the available taxonomy of human behavior, the relationship between behavioral functions and the nervous system has remained elusive. Many studies have used fMRI to examine which brain region was activated for a particular behavioral task. In a lesser extent and systematic fashion, other studies have examined how behavioral variability across subjects or pathology relate to grey matter volume (GM) assuming that if a given brain region is engaged in a particular behavioral function, GM in that region should covary with performance or scores measured with a specific task or (clinical) questionnaire targeting this function. Moreover, it has to be acknowledged, that most likely no brain region may support a particular behavioral function on its own. Hence, identifying those phenotypes that may be predicted from structural and functional connectivity patterns of a region may provide another alternative to its functional characterization. However, these different concepts towards functional characterization have never been compared in order to examine how they converge or complement each other. Filling this gap by a systematic evaluation thus represents the key aim of this work. Implementing a large array of different approaches towards functional inference, applying them to a heterogeneous set of regions and comparing the ensuing characterizations will represent an important foundation for future brain mapping endeavors by providing an objective reference for how to answer the key question in systems neuroscience 'What does this part of the brain do?'