AI Summary
The article explores the reliability, heritability, and predictive abilities of different spatial scales of the functional connectome during development. The functional connectome refers to the network of connections within the brain that support information transmission. The study focuses on both coarse-scale (broad cortical regions) and fine-scale (vertex-wise connections) functional connectomes. In adults, the fine-scale connectome predicts up to twice the variance in cognition compared to the coarse-scale connectome. However, previous studies on individual differences in cognition have primarily focused on the coarse-scale connectome in large developmental samples. The study uses a large cohort of children (age 9-10 years) and examines the reliability, heritability, and behavioral relevance of functional connectivity at different scales. The researchers use connectivity hyperalignment to improve access to reliable fine-scale connectivity information and compare it to the traditional coarse-scale connectome. The findings show that individual differences in the fine-scale connectome are more reliable but less heritable compared to the coarse-scale connectome. The alignment and scale of the connectomes also influence their ability to predict behavior. Some cognitive traits are equally well predicted by both connectome scales, while less heritable cognitive traits are better predicted by the fine-scale connectome. Overall
The functional connectome supports information transmission through the brain at various spatial scales, from exchange between broad cortical regions to finer-scale, vertex-wise connections that underlie specific information processing mechanisms. In adults, while both the coarse- and fine-scale functional connectomes predict cognition, the fine scale can predict up to twice the variance as the coarse-scale functional connectome. Yet, past brain-wide association studies, particularly using large developmental samples, focus on the coarse connectome to understand the neural underpinnings of individual differences in cognition. Using a large cohort of children (age 9–10 years; n = 1,115 individuals; both sexes; 50% female, including 170 monozygotic and 219 dizygotic twin pairs and 337 unrelated individuals), we examine the reliability, heritability, and behavioral relevance of resting-state functional connectivity computed at different spatial scales. We use connectivity hyperalignment to improve access to reliable fine-scale (vertex-wise) connectivity information and compare the fine-scale connectome with the traditional parcel-wise (coarse scale) functional connectomes. Though individual differences in the fine-scale connectome are more reliable than those in the coarse-scale, they are less heritable. Further, the alignment and scale of connectomes influence their ability to predict behavior, whereby some cognitive traits are equally well predicted by both connectome scales, but other, less heritable cognitive traits are better predicted by the fine-scale connectome. Together, our findings suggest there are dissociable individual differences in information processing represented at different scales of the functional connectome which, in turn, have distinct implications for heritability and cognition.