State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Xiangyu Kong
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Yirong Xiong
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Bo Sun
School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Sebastian Ocklenburg
Department of Psychology, Medical School Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; ICAN Institute for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Medical School Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Biopsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China; Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing, China
Structural hemispheric asymmetry has long been assumed to guide functional lateralization of the human brain, but empirical evidence for this compelling hypothesis remains scarce. Recently, it has been suggested that microstructural asymmetries may be more relevant to functional lateralization than macrostructural asymmetries. To investigate the link between microstructure and function, we analyzed multimodal MRI data in 907 right-handed participants. We quantified structural asymmetry and functional lateralization of the planum temporale (PT), a cortical area crucial for auditory-language processing. We found associations between PT functional lateralization and several structural asymmetries, such as surface area, intracortical myelin content, neurite density, and neurite orientation dispersion. The PT structure also showed hemispheric-specific coupling with its functional activity. All these functional-structural associations are highly specific to within-PT functional activity during auditory-language processing. These results suggest that structural asymmetry underlies functional lateralization of the same brain area and highlights a critical role of microstructural PT asymmetries in auditory-language processing.
