Reliable individual differences in fine-grained cortical functional architecture
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
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.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Even within species, there are well-known systematic differences between individuals.
“Even within species, there are well-known systematic differences between individuals [61–63]”
From The Umwelt Representation Hypothesis: rethinking Universality (2026) · cites this paper as [62]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Jenkinson, M., Bannister, P., Brady, M., & Smith, S. (2002) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1006/nimg.2002.1132 · Cited by 11,888 · see citing works
Functional connectivity in the motor cortex of resting human brain using echo‐planar mri
Biswal, B., Zerrin Yetkin, F., Haughton, V. M., & Hyde, J. S. (1995) · Magnetic Resonance in Medicine · doi:10.1002/mrm.1910340409 · Cited by 9,812 · see citing works
Fischl, B. (2012) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.021 · Cited by 9,526 · see citing works
The organization of the human cerebral cortex estimated by intrinsic functional connectivity
Thomas Yeo, B. T., Krienen, F. M., Sepulcre, J., Sabuncu, M. R., Lashkari, D., Hollinshead, M., Roffman, J. L., Smoller, J. W., Zöllei, L., Polimeni, J. R., et al. (2011) · Journal of Neurophysiology · doi:10.1152/jn.00338.2011 · Cited by 9,182 · see citing works
The proof and measurement of association between two things
Spearman, C. (1904) · The American Journal of Psychology · doi:10.2307/1412159 · Cited by 8,039 · see citing works
The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception
Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J., & Chun, M. M. (1997) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.17-11-04302.1997 · Cited by 7,738 · see citing works
The organization of the human cerebellum estimated by intrinsic functional connectivity
Buckner, R. L., Krienen, F. M., Castellanos, A., Diaz, J. C., & Yeo, B. T. T. (2011) · Journal of Neurophysiology · doi:10.1152/jn.00339.2011 · Cited by 7,304 · see citing works
N4ITK: Improved N3 Bias Correction
Tustison, N. J., Avants, B., Cook, P. A., Zheng, Y., Egan, A., Yushkevich, P. A., & Gee, J. C. (2010) · IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging · doi:10.1109/tmi.2010.2046908 · Cited by 6,119 · see citing works
A component based noise correction method (CompCor) for BOLD and perfusion based fMRI
Behzadi, Y., Restom, K., Liau, J., & Liu, T. T. (2007) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.04.042 · Cited by 4,502 · see citing works
Functional Network Organization of the Human Brain
Power, J. D., Cohen, A. L., Nelson, S. M., Wig, G. S., Barnes, K. A., Church, J. A., Vogel, A. C., Laumann, T. O., Miezin, F. M., Schlaggar, B. L., et al. (2011) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.09.006 · Cited by 4,124 · see citing works
Distributed and overlapping representations of faces and objects in ventral temporal cortex
Haxby, J. V., Gobbini, M. I., Furey, M. L., Ishai, A., Schouten, J. L., & Pietrini, P. (2001) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1063736 · Cited by 3,940 · see citing works
Self-citationfMRIPrep: A robust preprocessing pipeline for functional MRI
Esteban, O., Markiewicz, C. J., Blair, R. W., Moodie, C. A., Isik, A. I., Erramuzpe, A., Kent, J. D., Goncalves, M., DuPre, E., Snyder, M., et al. (2019) · Nature Methods · doi:10.1038/s41592-018-0235-4 · Cited by 3,905 · see citing works
Methods to detect, characterize, and remove motion artifact in resting state fMRI
Power, J. D., Mitra, A., Laumann, T. O., Snyder, A. Z., Schlaggar, B. L., & Petersen, S. E. (2014) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.048 · Cited by 3,748 · see citing works
Accurate and robust brain image alignment using boundary-based registration
Greve, D. N., & Fischl, B. R. (2009) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.06.060 · Cited by 3,553 · see citing works
Representational similarity analysis-connecting the branches of systems neuroscience
Kriegeskorte, N. (2008) · Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/neuro.06.004.2008 · Cited by 3,355 · see citing works
Information-based functional brain mapping
Kriegeskorte, N., Goebel, R., & Bandettini, P. (2006) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0600244103 · Cited by 2,113 · see citing works
Ensemble Methods: Foundations and Algorithms
Zhou, Z. (2012) · Cited by 2,051 · see citing works
Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision
Hasson, U., Nir, Y., Levy, I., Fuhrmann, G., & Malach, R. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1089506 · Cited by 1,839 · see citing works
Efficiency of Functional Brain Networks and Intellectual Performance
van den Heuvel, M. P., Stam, C. J., Kahn, R. S., & Hulshoff Pol, H. E. (2009) · Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.1443-09.2009 · Cited by 1,078 · see citing works
Cox, D., & Savoy, R. L. (2003) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/s1053-8119(03)00049-1 · Cited by 1,057 · see citing works
Building better biomarkers: brain models in translational neuroimaging
Woo, C.-W., Chang, L. J., Lindquist, M. A., & Wager, T. D. (2017) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn.4478 · Cited by 1,056 · see citing works
Testing Predictions From Personality Neuroscience: Brain Structure and the Big Five
DeYoung, C. G., Hirsh, J. B., Shane, M. S., Papademetris, X., Rajeevan, N., & Gray, J. R. (2010) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797610370159 · Cited by 995 · see citing works
Functional connectomics from resting-state fMRI
Smith, S. M., Vidaurre, D., Beckmann, C. F., Glasser, M. F., Jenkinson, M., Miller, K. L., Nichols, T. E., Robinson, E. C., Salimi-Khorshidi, G., Woolrich, M. W., et al. (2013) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.016 · Cited by 952 · see citing works
Single subject prediction of brain disorders in neuroimaging: Promises and pitfalls
Arbabshirani, M. R., Plis, S., Sui, J., & Calhoun, V. D. (2017) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.02.079 · Cited by 912 · see citing works
Representational geometry: integrating cognition, computation, and the brain
Kriegeskorte, N., & Kievit, R. (2013) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2013.06.007 · Cited by 898 · see citing works
Robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity
Beaty, R. E., Kenett, Y. N., Christensen, A. P., Rosenberg, M. D., Benedek, M., Chen, Q., Fink, A., Qiu, J., Kwapil, T. R., Kane, M. J., et al. (2018) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1713532115 · Cited by 828 · see citing works
Decoding Neural Representational Spaces Using Multivariate Pattern Analysis
Haxby, J. V., Connolly, A. C., & Guntupalli, J. S. (2014) · Annual Review of Neuroscience · doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-062012-170325 · Cited by 717 · see citing works
Self-citationA Common, High-Dimensional Model of the Representational Space in Human Ventral Temporal Cortex
Haxby, J. V., Guntupalli, J. S., Connolly, A. C., Halchenko, Y. O., Conroy, B., Gobbini, M. I., Hanke, M., & Ramadge, P. J. (2011) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.08.026 · Cited by 645 · see citing works
Self-citationBuilding a Science of Individual Differences from fMRI
Dubois, J., & Adolphs, R. (2016) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2016.03.014 · Cited by 610 · see citing works
Divide and conquer: A defense of functional localizers
Saxe, R., Brett, M., & Kanwisher, N. (2006) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.12.062 · Cited by 544 · see citing works
Prediction as a Humanitarian and Pragmatic Contribution from Human Cognitive Neuroscience
Gabrieli, J. D. E., Ghosh, S., & Whitfield, S. (2015) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2014.10.047 · Cited by 526 · see citing works
The secret lives of experiments: Methods reporting in the fMRI literature
Carp, J. (2012) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.07.004 · Cited by 473 · see citing works
PyMVPA: a Python Toolbox for Multivariate Pattern Analysis of fMRI Data
Hanke, M., Halchenko, Y. O., Sederberg, P. B., Hanson, S. J., Haxby, J. V., & Pollmann, S. (2009) · Neuroinformatics · doi:10.1007/s12021-008-9041-y · Cited by 468 · see citing works
Self-citationComparison of multivariate classifiers and response normalizations for pattern-information fMRI
Misaki, M., Kim, Y., Bandettini, P. A., & Kriegeskorte, N. (2010) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.051 · Cited by 454 · see citing works
The Representation of Biological Classes in the Human Brain
Connolly, A. C., Guntupalli, J. S., Gors, J. D., Hanke, M., Halchenko, Y. O., Wu, Y., Abdi, H., & Haxby, J. V. (2012) · Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.5547-11.2012 · Cited by 408 · see citing works
Self-citationClinical applications of the functional connectome
Castellanos, F. X., Di Martino, A., Craddock, R. C., Mehta, A. D., & Milham, M. P. (2013) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.04.083 · Cited by 312 · see citing works
Frost, M. A., & Goebel, R. (2011) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.08.035 · Cited by 305 · see citing works
Wolfers, T., Buitelaar, J. K., Beckmann, C. F., Franke, B., & Marquand, A. F. (2015) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.08.001 · Cited by 290 · see citing works
Personality Is Reflected in the Brain's Intrinsic Functional Architecture
Adelstein, J. S., Shehzad, Z. E., Mennes, M., DeYoung, C. G., Zuo, X., Kelly, C. A. M., Margulies, D. S., Bloomfield, A., Gray, J. R., Castellanos, F. X., et al. (2011) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0027633 · Cited by 286 · see citing works
Nieto-Castañón, A., & Fedorenko, E. (2012) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.065 · Cited by 247 · see citing works
Weiner, K. S., Golarai, G., Caspers, J., Chuapoco, M. R., Mohlberg, H., Zilles, K., Amunts, K., & Kalanit Grill-spector, A. (2013) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.068 · Cited by 237 · see citing works
Individual differences in functional connectivity during naturalistic viewing conditions
Vanderwal, T., Eilbott, J. A., Finn, E. S., Craddock, R. C., Turnbull, A. G., & Castellanos, F. X. (2017) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.06.027 · Cited by 234 · see citing works
Individual variability of the system-level Organization of the Human Brain
Gordon, E. M., Laumann, T. O., Adeyemo, B., & Petersen, S. E. (2015) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhv239 · Cited by 219 · see citing works
Individual-specific features of brain systems identified with resting state functional correlations
Gordon, E. M., Laumann, T. O., Adeyemo, B., Gilmore, A. W., Nelson, S. M., Dosenbach, N. U. F., & Petersen, S. E. (2016) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.08.032 · Cited by 214 · see citing works
A Model of Representational Spaces in Human Cortex
Guntupalli, J. S., Hanke, M., Halchenko, Y. O., Connolly, A. C., Ramadge, P. J., & Haxby, J. V. (2016) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhw068 · Cited by 206 · see citing works
Self-citationFMRIPrep: a robust preprocessing pipeline for functional MRIPreprint
Estéban, O., Markiewicz, C. J., Blair, R. W., Moodie, C. A., Isik, A. I., Erramuzpe, A., Kent, J. D., Goncalves, M., DuPré, E., Snyder, M., et al. (2018) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/306951 · Cited by 195 · see citing works
Unique semantic space in the brain of each beholder predicts perceived similarity
Charest, I., Kievit, R., Schmitz, T. W., Deca, D., & Kriegeskorte, N. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1402594111 · Cited by 193 · see citing works
Statistical limitations in functional neuroimaging II. Signal detection and statistical inference
Petersson, K. M., Nichols, T. E., Poline, J.-B., & Holmes, A. P. (1999) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.1999.0478 · Cited by 186 · see citing works
The Animacy Continuum in the Human Ventral Vision Pathway
Sha, L., Haxby, J. V., Abdi, H., Guntupalli, J. S., Oosterhof, N. N., Halchenko, Y. O., & Connolly, A. C. (2014) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00733 · Cited by 172 · see citing works
Self-citationA comparison of volume-based and surface-based multi-voxel pattern analysis
Oosterhof, N. N., Wiestler, T., Downing, P. E., & Diedrichsen, J. (2010) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.04.270 · Cited by 163 · see citing works
A reduced-dimension fMRI shared response model
Chen, P.-H., Chen, J., Yeshurun, Y., Hasson, U., Haxby, J. V., & Ramadge, P. J. (2015) · neural information processing systems · Cited by 145 · see citing works
Self-citationConsistency and variability in functional localisers
Duncan, K. J. K., Pattamadilok, C., Knierim, I., & Devlin, J. T. (2009) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.03.014 · Cited by 131 · see citing works
Zhen, Z., Yang, Z., Huang, L., Kong, X., Wang, X., Dang, X., Huang, Y., Song, Y., & Jia Liu, B. (2015) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.03.010 · Cited by 130 · see citing works
Individual Variability in Brain Activity: A Nuisance or an Opportunity?
Horn, J. D. V., Grafton, S. T., & Miller, M. B. (2008) · Brain Imaging and Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11682-008-9049-9 · Cited by 119 · see citing works
Castello, M. V. D. O., Halchenko, Y. O., Guntupalli, J. S., Gors, J. D., & Gobbini, M. I. (2017) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-017-12559-1 · Cited by 110 · see citing works
Self-citationAttention Selectively Reshapes the Geometry of Distributed Semantic Representation
Nastase, S. A., Connolly, A. C., Oosterhof, N. N., Halchenko, Y. O., Guntupalli, J. S., Castello, M. V. D. O., Gors, J. D., Gobbini, M. I., & Haxby, J. V. (2017) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhx138 · Cited by 107 · see citing works
Self-citationA computational model of shared fine-scale structure in the human connectome
Guntupalli, J. S., Feilong, M., & Haxby, J. V. (2018) · PLoS Computational Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006120 · Cited by 98 · see citing works
Self-citationDisentangling the Representation of Identity from Head View Along the Human Face Processing Pathway
Guntupalli, J. S., Wheeler, K. G., & Gobbini, M. I. (2016) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhw344 · Cited by 93 · see citing works
Self-citationPrecision Neuroscience: Dense Sampling of Individual Brains
Poldrack, R. A. (2017) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2017.08.002 · Cited by 86 · see citing works
Weiner, K. S., Barnett, M., Witthoft, N., Golarai, G., Anthony Stigliani, A., Kay, K., Gomez, J., Natu, V. S., Amunts, K., Zilles, K., et al. (2017) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.04.040 · Cited by 81 · see citing works
Multi-scale classification of disease using structural MRI and wavelet transform
Ritter, K., Paul, F., Weygandt, M., Allefeld, C., & Haynes, J. (2012) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.05.022 · Cited by 78 · see citing works
Zhen, Z., Kong, X., Huang, L., Yang, Z., Wang, X., Hao, X., Huang, T., Song, Y., & Jia Liu, B. (2017) · Human Brain Mapping · doi:10.1002/hbm.23519 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Inter-subject neural code converter for visual image representation
Yamada, K., Miyawaki, Y., & Kamitani, Y. (2015) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.03.059 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
High-resolution intersubject averaging and a coordinate system for the cortical surface
Fischl, B., Sereno, M. I., Tootell, R. B. H., & Dale, A. M. (1999) · Human Brain Mapping · doi:10.1002/(sici)1097-0193(1999)8:4
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Leveraging shared connectivity to aggregate heterogeneous datasets into a common response space
Nastase, S. A., Liu, Y.-F., Hillman, H., Norman, K. A., & Hasson, U. (2020) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116865 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Self-citationIndividual gaze shapes diverging neural representations
Borovska, P., & de Haas, B. (2024) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2405602121 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
High-dimensional structure underlying individual differences in naturalistic visual experience
Han, C., & Bonner, M. F. (2026) · Current Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cub.2025.12.039 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
The Umwelt Representation Hypothesis: rethinking Universality
Bosch, V., Sommers, R. P., Doerig, A., & Kietzmann, T. C. (2026) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2026.07.004 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Feilong, M., Nastase, S. A., Guntupalli, J. S., & Haxby, J. V.
- Affiliations
- Dartmouth College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Haxby, James V.
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-12
- Volume
- 183
- Pages
- 375-386
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC12551967
- OpenAlex
- W2949433222
- Cited by
- 68
- References
- 64
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 4.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- NeuroImage (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (NSF1607845)
- National Institute of Mental Health (5R01MH075706)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
- Keywords
- individual differences, hyperalignment, reliability statistics, functional markers
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Individuality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Reproducibility of Results, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review