We published a research article in PNAS, demonstrating that functional connectivity involving white matter provides unique information about human neurodevelopment and behavior beyond gray-matter connectivity. Both gray–white (G-W) and white–white (W-W) functional connectivity robustly predicted brain age and cognition, with both retaining significant predictive information after accounting for gray–gray (G-G) connectivity. Moreover, G-W connectivity uniquely predicted ADHD symptoms beyond G-G connectivity. Feature-weight analyses further revealed distributed contributions from commissural, projection, association, and superficial white-matter pathways, indicating a structured white-matter functional architecture that complements, rather than simply mirrors, gray-matter functional organization. Together, these findings establish white-matter functional connectivity as a distinct, developmentally sensitive, and behaviorally meaningful component of the human connectome, extending current models of human neurodevelopment beyond gray-matter networks alone.

Congratulations to Jing Cong, Shaoling Zhao, and Haoshu Xu. We thank all collaborators who contributed to the study, especially the support from Xiaoyu Xu.

Check here for more information: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2604191123.