Connectivity Profile and Function of Uniquely Human Cortical Areas
Katherine Bryant, Julia A. Camilleri, Shaun Warrington, Guilherme Blazquez Freches, Stamatios N. Sotiropoulos, Saâd Jbabdi, Simon B. Eickhoff, Rogier B. Mars
Abstract
Determining the brain specializations unique to humans requires directly comparable anatomical information from other primates, especially our closest relatives. Human ( Homo sapiens ; m/f), chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ; f), and rhesus macaque ( Macaca mulatta ; m/f) white matter atlases were used to create connectivity blueprints, i.e., descriptions of the cortical gray matter in terms of the connectivity with homologous white matter tracts. This allowed a quantitative comparison of cortical organization across the species. We identified human-unique connectivity profiles concentrated in temporal and parietal cortices and hominid-unique organization in the prefrontal cortex. Functional decoding revealed human-unique hotspots correlated with language processing and social cognition. Overall, our results counter models that assign primacy to the prefrontal cortex for human uniqueness.