Myelination and excitation-inhibition balance synergistically shape structure-function coupling across the human cortex

Abstract

Recent work has demonstrated that the relationship between structural and functional connectivity varies regionally across the human brain, with reduced coupling emerging along the sensory-association cortical hierarchy. The biological underpinnings driving this expression, however, remain largely unknown. Here, we postulated that intracortical myelination and excitation-inhibition (EI) balance mediate the heterogeneous expression of structure-function coupling (SFC) and its temporal variance across the cortical hierarchy. We employed atlas-and voxel-based connectivity approaches to analyze neuroimaging data acquired from two groups of healthy participants. Our findings were consistent across processing pipelines: 1) increased myelination and lower EI-ratio associated with more rigid SFC and restricted moment-to-moment SFC fluctuations; 2) a gradual shift from EI-ratio to myelination as the principal predictor of SFC occurred when traversing from granular to agranular cortical regions. Collectively, our work delivers a novel framework to conceptualize structure-function relationships in the human brain, paving the way for an improved understanding of how demyelination and/or EI-imbalances induce reorganization in brain disorders.