Reliable individual differences in fine-grained cortical functional architecture

Abstract

Fine-grained functional organization of cortex is not well-conserved across individuals. As a result, individual differences in cortical functional architecture are confounded by topographic idiosyncrasies-i.e., differences in functional-anatomical correspondence. In this study, we used hyperalignment to align information encoded in topographically variable patterns to study individual differences in fine-grained cortical functional architecture in a common representational space. We characterized the structure of individual differences using three common functional indices, and assessed the reliability of this structure across independent samples of data in a natural vision paradigm. Hyperalignment markedly improved the reliability of individual differences across all three indices by resolving topographic idiosyncrasies and accommodating information encoded in spatially fine-grained response patterns. Our results demonstrate that substantial individual differences in cortical functional architecture exist at fine spatial scales, but are inaccessible with anatomical normalization alone.

Keywords: Functional alignment; Hyperalignment; Individual differences; Natural vision; Reliability; fMRI.