Large-Scale Gradients in Human Cortical Organization

Advances in neuroimaging technologies and analytics have enabled the discovery of gradients in microstructure, connectivity, gene expression, and function in the human cerebral cortex. The notion that functional processing hierarchies are confined to sensorimotor systems is challenged by recent descriptions of global hierarchies, extending throughout transmodal association areas. An innovative line of research has uncovered a cortical hierarchy in the temporal domain that accounts for spatially distributed functional specialization. Recent advances in mapping cortical areas in the human brain provide a basis for investigating the significance of their spatial arrangement. Here we describe a dominant gradient…