The cortical surface is organized into a large number of cortical areas; however, these areas have not been comprehensively mapped in the human. Abrupt transitions in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) patterns can noninvasively identify locations of putative borders between cortical areas (RSFC-boundary mapping; Cohen et al. 2008). Here we describe a technique for using RSFC-boundary maps to define parcels that represent putative cortical areas. These parcels had highly homogenous RSFC patterns, indicating that they contained one unique RSFC signal; furthermore, the parcels were much more homogenous than a null model matched for parcel size when tested in two separate datasets. Several alternative parcellation schemes were tested this way, and no other parcellation was as homogenous as or had as large a difference compared with its null model. The boundary map-derived parcellation contained parcels that overlapped with architectonic mapping of areas 17, 2, 3, and 4. These parcels had a network structure similar to the known network structure of the brain, and their connectivity patterns were reliable across individual subjects. These observations suggest that RSFC-boundary map-derived parcels provide information about the location and extent of human cortical areas. A parcellation generated using this method is available at http://www.nil.wustl.edu/labs/petersen/Resources.html.

Abstract& Researchers have long debated whether knowledge about the self is unique in terms of its functional anatomic representation within the human brain. In the context of memory function, knowledge about the self is typically remembered better than other types of semantic information.

The involvement of dorsal frontal and medial temporal regions during the encoding of words, namable line-drawn objects, and unfamiliar faces was examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Robust dorsal frontal activations were observed in each instance, but lateralization was strongly dependent on the materials being encoded. Encoding of words produced left-lateralized dorsal frontal activation, whereas encoding of unfamiliar faces produced homologous right-lateralized activation. Encoding of namable objects, which are amenable to both verbal and nonverbal encoding, yielded bilateral dorsal frontal activation. A similar pattern of results was observed in the medial temporal lobe. These results indicate that regions in both hemispheres underlie human long-term memory encoding, and these regions can be engaged differentially according to the nature of the material being encoded.

Abstract& This study examines whether the cognitive and affective components of self-reflection can be dissociated using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Using a simple paradigm in which subjects judged the personal relevance of personality characteristics that were either favorable (e.g

This study investigated human anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) involvement during a task that dissociated expectancy violation from social rejection. Across two studies, participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while making social judgments and receiving fictitious feedback that was either positive or negative and consistent or inconsistent with their expectations. The results demonstrate that the dorsal ACC is sensitive to expectancy violations, whereas the ventral ACC is differentially responsive to social feedback.

Failures of self-regulation are common, leading to many of the most vexing problems facing contemporary society, from overeating and obesity to impulsive sexual behavior and HIV/AIDS. One reason that people may be prone to engaging in unwanted behaviors is because of heightened sensitivity to cues related to those behaviors; people may overeat because of hyper responsiveness to food cues, addicts may relapse following exposure to their drug of choice, and some people might engage in impulsive sexual activity because they are easily aroused by erotic stimuli. An open question is the extent to which individual differences in neural cue reactivity relate to actual behavioral outcomes. Here we show that individual differences in human reward-related brain activity in the nucleus accumbens to food and sexual images predict subsequent weight gain and sexual activity six months later. These findings suggest that heightened reward responsivity in the brain to food and sexual cues is associated with indulgence in overeating and sexual activity, respectively, and provide evidence for a common neural mechanism associated with appetitive behaviors.

Human motor skills can be acquired by observation without the benefit of immediate physical practice. The current study tested if physical rehearsal and observational learning share common neural substrates within an action observation network (AON) including premotor and inferior parietal regions, that is, areas activated both for execution and observation of similar actions. Participants trained for 5 days on dance sequences set to music videos. Each day they physically rehearsed one set of dance sequences ("danced"), and passively watched a different set of sequences ("watched"). Functional magnetic resonance imaging was obtained prior to and immediately following the 5 days of training. After training, a subset of the AON showed a degree of common activity for observational and physical learning. Activity in these premotor and parietal regions was sustained during observation of sequences that were danced or watched, but declined for unfamiliar sequences relative to the pretraining scan session. These imaging data demonstrate the emergence of action resonance processes in the human brain based on observational learning without physical practice and identify commonalities in the neural substrates for physical and observational learning.

Efforts to identify meaningful functional imaging-based biomarkers are limited by the ability to reliably characterize inter-individual differences in human brain function. Although a growing number of connectomics-based measures are reported to have moderate to high test-retest reliability, the variability in data acquisition, experimental designs, and analytic methods precludes the ability to generalize results. The Consortium for Reliability and Reproducibility (CoRR) is working to address this challenge and establish test-retest reliability as a minimum standard for methods development in functional connectomics. Specifically, CoRR has aggregated 1,629 typical individuals’ resting state fMRI (rfMRI) data (5,093 rfMRI scans) from 18 international sites, and is openly sharing them via the International Data-sharing Neuroimaging Initiative (INDI). To allow researchers to generate various estimates of reliability and reproducibility, a variety of data acquisition procedures and experimental designs are included. Similarly, to enable users to assess the impact of commonly encountered artifacts (for example, motion) on characterizations of inter-individual variation, datasets of varying quality are included.