The neural basis of intelligence in fine-grained cortical topographies

Intelligent thought is the product of efficient neural information processing, which is embedded in fine-grained, topographically-organized population responses and supported by fine-grained patterns of connectivity among cortical fields. Previous work on the neural basis of intelligence, however, has focused on coarse-grained features of brain anatomy and function, because cortical topographies are highly idiosyncratic at a finer scale, obscuring individual differences in fine-grained connectivity patterns. We used a computational algorithm, hyperalignment, to resolve these topographic idiosyncrasies, and found that predictions of general intelligence based on fine-grained (vertex-by-vertex) connectivity patterns were markedly stronger than predictions based on coarse-grained (region-by-region) patterns. Intelligence was best predicted by fine-grained connectivity in the default and frontoparietal cortical systems, both of which are associated with self-generated thought. Previous work overlooked fine-grained architecture because existing methods couldn’t resolve idiosyncratic topographies, preventing investigation where the keys to the neural basis of intelligence are more likely to be found.