ReviewNature neuroscience2026
Rethinking the centrality of brain areas in understanding functional organization.
Review in Nature neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution and Reorganization of the Hierarchical Brain-wide Neuronal Network Through Anesthesia.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Characteristic spatiotemporal features of large-scale functional network architecture in posttraumatic stress disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Brain structure and function in Homo naledi.Brain structure & function · 2026Review
- Large-scale electrophysiology at single-spike resolution.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Monosynaptic connections link functionally similar regions in human cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Parallel processing chains span cytoarchitectures to organize association cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neural geometry in the human hippocampus enables generalization across spatial position and gaze.ArXiv · 2026Article
- The average does not represent the individual: White matter variability across the brain, across the population, and across the lifespan.Research square · 2026Article
- Systemic neuropsychology: toward a contemporary theory of topological functional systems.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Review
- Beyond discretization: why cognitive science should embrace continuity.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Parcellation of the cerebral cortex into functionally modular brain areas is foundational to cognitive and systems neuroscience. Here, we question the central status of brain areas from the perspectives of neuroanatomy and electrophysiology. We argue that the major ostensible determinants of brain function, such as cytoarchitecture and connectivity, seldom produce convergent parcellations. Brain areas themselves are just one of several equally important organizing principles; others include macroscale gradients, distributed networks, layers, columns and patches. We further argue that the evidence for a close correspondence between areal parcellation and cognitive function is weaker than is generally supposed. Indeed, many important cognitive functions appear to be implemented in a broadly distributed manner, whereas others appear to obey organizations that have little relationship to brain areas, including distributed networks and functional gradients. We conclude by suggesting a set of guiding principles for performing systems and cognitive neuroscience without the intellectual foundation provided by arealization.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.