Individual Variability in the Structural Connectivity Architecture of the Human Brain

Abstract

The human brain shows higher variability in functional connectivity in the heteromodal association cortex but lower variability in the unimodal cortex. As the anatomical substrate of functional connectivity, the temporal-spatial pattern of individual variability in structural connectivity remains largely unknown. In the present study, we depicted the temporal-spatial pattern of individual variability in structural connectivity, which is highest in the limbic regions and lowest in the unimodal sensorimotor regions. With increasing age, the variability in structural connectivity increased. Our results demonstrated that this specific spatial distribution relates to the plasticity of synapses and white matter. We proposed a modified ridge regression model to predict cognition individually and generate idiographic brain mapping. Individual variability in structural connectivity is significantly correlated with idiographic brain mapping. Overall, our study has potential implications for understanding biological and genetic mechanisms of variability in structural connectivity, guiding interventions to promote successful cognitive ageing and interpreting statistical maps in the human connectome.