Topographic preservation of functional connectivity among the association areas in the human cerebral cortex

Abstract

In the human sensorimotor cortex, some long-range corticocortical connections appear to preserve a fine-scale topology, in which physically close locations in the cortical region are functionally connected to physically close locations in other cortical regions. However, little is known about whether such topography preservation is unique to the sensorimotor areas or is general across other cortical areas. To investigate this question, we measured voxel-level functional connectivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and visualized the fine-scale spatial organization of the connectivity patterns across the cortical surface. We found topographical preservation across regions, including the default mode network. Our results suggest that the topographical preservation of functional connectivity is not restricted to the sensorimotor cortex but also occurs in the association cortex.