Reproducible cortical links between functional hierarchy, structure, and metabolism.

Functional hierarchy gradients in the cortex reliably predict regional cortical thickness and glucose metabolism across individuals and cohorts.

• Why it matters: Understanding how large-scale brain organization relates to underlying biology is crucial for deciphering cortical function and development, yet this link remains unclear.
• What they did: The study modeled cortical thickness and glucose metabolism as linear combinations of functional gradient components, analyzing data from MRI and FDG-PET across multiple groups.
• The result: Gradient-based models explained significant variance in cortical structure and metabolism, outperforming traditional metrics, and revealed microstructural and biological factors underlying cortical organization.