Precise Topology of Adjacent Domain-General and Sensory-Biased Regions in the Human Brain

Moataz Assem, Sneha Shashidhara, Matthew F. Glasser, John Duncan

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent functional MRI studies identified sensory-biased regions across much of the association cortices and cerebellum. However, their anatomical relationship to multiple-demand (MD) regions, characterized as domain-general due to their coactivation during multiple cognitive demands, remains unclear. For a better anatomical delineation, we used multimodal MRI techniques of the Human Connectome Project to scan subjects performing visual and auditory versions of a working memory (WM) task. The contrast between hard and easy WM showed strong domain generality, with essentially identical patterns of cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar MD activity for visual and auditory materials. In contrast, modality preferences were shown by contrasting easy WM with baseline; most MD regions showed visual preference while immediately adjacent to cortical MD regions, there were interleaved regions of both visual and auditory preference. The results may exemplify a general motif whereby domain-specific regions feed information into and out of an adjacent, integrative MD core.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2521-2537
Number of pages17
JournalCerebral Cortex
Volume32
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 15 2022

Keywords

  • auditory working memory
  • domain-general
  • multiple-demand
  • sensory-biased
  • visual working memory

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