Multimodal gradients across mouse cortex

The primate cerebral cortex displays a hierarchical organization that extends from primary sensorimotor to association areas, supporting increasingly integrated function that is underpinned by a gradient of heterogeneity in the brain s microcircuits. The extent to which these properties of brain organization are unique to primate or may be conserved across mammals remains unknown. Here we report the topographic similarity of large-scale gradients in cytoarchitecture, brain-related gene expression, interneuron cell densities, and long-range axonal connectivity, which vary from primary sensory through to prefrontal areas of mouse cortex, highlighting an underappreciated spatial dimension of mouse cortical specialization. Using the T1w:T2w magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) map as a common spatial reference for comparison across species, we report interspecies agreement in a range of cortical gradients, including a significant correspondence between gene transcriptional maps in mouse cortex with their human orthologs in human cortex. The interspecies correspondence of large-scale cortical gradients suggests that a conserved anatomical organization may underlie hierarchical specialization in mammalian brains.