Instant takeaway: A team from Penn / Philadelphia Children’s Hospital places white matter tracts onto the cortico-level hierarchy along the “sensorimotor → association” axis—seeing that cross-level “bridge tracts” connect more heterogeneous brain regions, and cognitive functions are broader, whereas tracts near the same level are more specialized.
According to Nature Human Behaviour (DOI 10.1038/s41562-026-02559-5) and the Medical Xpress / phys.org feature (2026-09-19): using tractography, they mapped 26 classic white matter tracts on each side, 52 in total, and compared them against the cortical sensorimotor–association (S–A) axis. Tracts with larger cross-level span show higher functional diversity (Gini vs. span Spearman rs≈−0.7; lower Gini = more evenly covering multiple functional terms). The more “diverse” ones include the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the middle longitudinal fasciculus, and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus; the more “specialized” ones include the optic radiations, the fornix, and the corticomedullary tracts. In three diffusion MRI cohorts (about 1145 / 638 / 1097 participants, spanning from childhood to young adulthood), bridge tracts also show a more pronounced microstructural age effect during childhood–adolescence.
This is a connectome framework meant to help researchers read “what each tract does and how it develops,” not a diagnostic tool, and not a prescription for training the brain.
Figure: Journal Fig.—schematic of white matter tract Gini diversity distribution + data overview (letterbox); not AI.
Data as of: Nature Human Behaviour DOI 10.1038/s41562-026-02559-5; phys.org / Medical Xpress 2026-09-19
#脑科学 #research
According to Nature Human Behaviour (DOI 10.1038/s41562-026-02559-5) and the Medical Xpress / phys.org feature (2026-09-19): using tractography, they mapped 26 classic white matter tracts on each side, 52 in total, and compared them against the cortical sensorimotor–association (S–A) axis. Tracts with larger cross-level span show higher functional diversity (Gini vs. span Spearman rs≈−0.7; lower Gini = more evenly covering multiple functional terms). The more “diverse” ones include the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), the middle longitudinal fasciculus, and the inferior longitudinal fasciculus; the more “specialized” ones include the optic radiations, the fornix, and the corticomedullary tracts. In three diffusion MRI cohorts (about 1145 / 638 / 1097 participants, spanning from childhood to young adulthood), bridge tracts also show a more pronounced microstructural age effect during childhood–adolescence.
This is a connectome framework meant to help researchers read “what each tract does and how it develops,” not a diagnostic tool, and not a prescription for training the brain.
Figure: Journal Fig.—schematic of white matter tract Gini diversity distribution + data overview (letterbox); not AI.
Data as of: Nature Human Behaviour DOI 10.1038/s41562-026-02559-5; phys.org / Medical Xpress 2026-09-19
#脑科学 #research