Biologically inspired alignment reveals distributed and directionally asymmetric correspondence between rat and human cortices
- 1Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China; MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Fudan Un
Abstract
Rodent models enable causal interrogation of brain circuits, but translating their systems-level organization to humans requires correspondence beyond one-to-one anatomical homology. Guided by the view that cortical areas are characterized by their relationships within distributed functional networks, we developed BrainMapping, a biologically inspired framework for aligning rat and human cortex using resting-state functional MRI. The framework combined a shared representation with optimal transport to derive probabilistic, bidirectional maps. These alignments revealed distributed, many-to-many correspondences that generalized to held-out subjects and preserved functional connectivity architecture, cortical gradients, and graph topology. Organizational preservation was directionally asymmetric. Human-to-rat mapping preserved organization more uniformly across rat cortical systems, whereas rat-to-human mapping showed stronger preservation in human association-related networks than in primary sensory and motor networks. The maps recovered literature-consistent default-mode and salience-system correspondences and generated testable non-canonical predictions. These findings provide a framework for expressing rat functional organization in human functional-network coordinates.
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BibTeX
@misc{dong2026biologically,
title = {{Biologically inspired alignment reveals distributed and directionally asymmetric correspondence between rat and human cortices}},
author = {X. Dong and Q. Luo and A. Cai and Z. Jin and C. Mu and F. Wang and H. Shan},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.13.758283},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758283v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Biologically inspired alignment reveals distributed and directionally asymmetric correspondence between rat and human cortices
AU - X. Dong
AU - Q. Luo
AU - A. Cai
AU - Z. Jin
AU - C. Mu
AU - F. Wang
AU - H. Shan
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.13.758283
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.13.758283v1
AB - Rodent models enable causal interrogation of brain circuits, but translating their systems-level organization to humans requires correspondence beyond one-to-one anatomical homology. Guided by the view that cortical areas are characterized by their relationships within distributed functional networks, we developed BrainMapping, a biologically inspired framework for aligning rat and human cortex using resting-state functional MRI. The framework combined a shared representation with optimal transport to derive probabilistic, bidirectional maps. These alignments revealed distributed, many-to-many correspondences that generalized to held-out subjects and preserved functional connectivity architecture, cortical gradients, and graph topology. Organizational preservation was directionally asymmetric. Human-to-rat mapping preserved organization more uniformly across rat cortical systems, whereas rat-to-human mapping showed stronger preservation in human association-related networks than in primary sensory and motor networks. The maps recovered literature-consistent default-mode and salience-system correspondences and generated testable non-canonical predictions. These findings provide a framework for expressing rat functional organization in human functional-network coordinates.
ER -