The global communication pathways of the human brain transcend the cortical-subcortical-cerebellar division

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Schulte, Julian, Senden, Mario, Deco, Gustavo, Kobeleva, Xenia, Zamora-López, Gorka
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Schulte, Julian
Senden, Mario
Deco, Gustavo
Kobeleva, Xenia
Zamora-López, Gorka
author_facet Schulte, Julian
Senden, Mario
Deco, Gustavo
Kobeleva, Xenia
Zamora-López, Gorka
contents Understanding how cortex, subcortex and cerebellum integrate is a major challenge for neuroscience, however, studies of the brain's structural connectivity have mostly focused on cortico-cortical links. Here, we used diffusion imaging to construct the structural connectome of the entire human brain including 360 cortical, 233 subcortical, and 125 cerebellar regions of interest (ROIs). We found that the brain forms a modular and hierarchical network architecture, organized into modules of mixed cortical, subcortical and/or cerebellar regions, and whose cross-modular pathways are centralized through highly connected hub ROIs (a `rich-club'). This global rich-club is subcortically dominated and, surprisingly, composed of hub ROIs from all subcortical structures rather than one region like the thalamus, centralizing the communication pathways. This study improves our understanding of the human brain's organization. It provides structural evidence to question the prevalent cortico-centric notion by revealing a connectome centered at the subcortex but made of transversal pathways.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_22893
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The global communication pathways of the human brain transcend the cortical-subcortical-cerebellar division
Schulte, Julian
Senden, Mario
Deco, Gustavo
Kobeleva, Xenia
Zamora-López, Gorka
Neurons and Cognition
Understanding how cortex, subcortex and cerebellum integrate is a major challenge for neuroscience, however, studies of the brain's structural connectivity have mostly focused on cortico-cortical links. Here, we used diffusion imaging to construct the structural connectome of the entire human brain including 360 cortical, 233 subcortical, and 125 cerebellar regions of interest (ROIs). We found that the brain forms a modular and hierarchical network architecture, organized into modules of mixed cortical, subcortical and/or cerebellar regions, and whose cross-modular pathways are centralized through highly connected hub ROIs (a `rich-club'). This global rich-club is subcortically dominated and, surprisingly, composed of hub ROIs from all subcortical structures rather than one region like the thalamus, centralizing the communication pathways. This study improves our understanding of the human brain's organization. It provides structural evidence to question the prevalent cortico-centric notion by revealing a connectome centered at the subcortex but made of transversal pathways.
title The global communication pathways of the human brain transcend the cortical-subcortical-cerebellar division
topic Neurons and Cognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.22893