Fig. 3: Cortical patterning of thalamic connections corresponds to key cortical gradients.

a The PC1 loadings for cortical regions are shown projected onto the cortical surface, revealing an anterior-posterior gradient of thalamocortical connectivity. b Representative tractogram (plotted in MNI152 space) where each streamline is coloured according to its PC1 score and loading of the corresponding seed point and cortical region it traverses between. c Projection of PC1 loadings of the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas (AMBA) data onto respective cortical regions, displayed as a flat map. The smaller flat map plot indicates major cortical divisions (prefrontal, lateral, somatomotor, visual, medial, and auditory)⁵⁹. Grey regions indicate cortical areas which no gene expression and/or connectivity data was available. d Correlation between cortical region PC1 loadings (for the human data) and MEG intrinsic timescales (Pearson’s \(r(248)=-0.79\), \({p}_{{spin}}=0.0002\), CI\(=[-0.84,-0.74]\), two-tailed). Points are coloured according to their PC1 loading. e Correlation between mouse cortical PC1 loadings and hierarchical level (Pearson’s \(r(30)=-0.48\), \(p=0.006\), CI \(=[-0.71,-0.15]\), two-tailed). Points are coloured according to their mouse cortical PC1 loading. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.