Paulina Quint, Pia-Magdalena Schmidt, Sarah Mackert, Behrem Aslan, Matthias Guth, Leon von der Emde, Raphael Lechtenboehmer, Kaja Faßbender, Philine M. Baumert, Birgit Stoffel-Wagner, Ramona Dolscheid-Pommerich, Rüdiger Stirnberg, Tony Stöcker, Ulrich Ettinger
{"title":"GABAergic Modulation of Brain Function During Prosaccade and Antisaccade Eye Movements: Evidence From Ultra-High-Field fMRI","authors":"Paulina Quint, Pia-Magdalena Schmidt, Sarah Mackert, Behrem Aslan, Matthias Guth, Leon von der Emde, Raphael Lechtenboehmer, Kaja Faßbender, Philine M. Baumert, Birgit Stoffel-Wagner, Ramona Dolscheid-Pommerich, Rüdiger Stirnberg, Tony Stöcker, Ulrich Ettinger","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70598","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70598","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Benzodiazepines act as positive allosteric modulators of the GABA<sub>A</sub> receptor and affect several motor and cognitive functions. By engaging perceptual-motor as well as inhibitory control processes, the antisaccade task was used in previous studies to investigate effects of benzodiazepines on behavioral performance. Using a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subjects design, this study combined eye-tracking with BOLD fMRI in order to examine the neural correlates of these effects for the first time. <i>N</i> = 39 healthy participants completed an antisaccade task after administration of either 1 mg lorazepam or placebo. On a behavioral level, lorazepam led to reduced (anti-)saccadic peak velocity as well as increased (anti-)saccadic latency. On a neural level, drug-induced reduction of BOLD was found in a fronto-parietal-occipital network, including key oculomotor regions. This result was further supported by our finding of increased GABA<sub>A</sub> receptor density in the affected network. On an individual level, decline in peak velocity under lorazepam was associated with decreased neural activation in several cortical regions, including medial frontal eye fields. No interactions between drug and saccade condition (prosaccade, antisaccade) were found. Our results therefore suggest GABAergic modulation of a more general saccade-related network rather than of specific components for inhibitory control processes. Future studies may rely on BOLD signal as a sensitive marker for benzodiazepine activity during saccadic eye movements.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70598","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148390484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Upasana Nathaniel, Tracey V. Wick, Josef L. Ling, Vadim Zotev, Divyasree Sasi Kumar, Samuel D. Miller, Harm J. van der Horn, John P. Phillips, Andrew R. Mayer
{"title":"Injury Severity Influences Long-Term Cognitive Control in Pediatric “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury","authors":"Upasana Nathaniel, Tracey V. Wick, Josef L. Ling, Vadim Zotev, Divyasree Sasi Kumar, Samuel D. Miller, Harm J. van der Horn, John P. Phillips, Andrew R. Mayer","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70580","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70580","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Pediatric “mild” traumatic brain injury (pmTBI), or concussion, is increasingly associated with persisting and often undiagnosed cognitive difficulties, particularly, in adolescents. Emerging evidence suggests that these deficits are most pronounced during tasks requiring competing attentional demands (i.e., reactive control). However, it remains unclear how injury severity, indexed by loss of consciousness and/or posttraumatic amnesia (LOC/PTA) interacts with neurodevelopment to shape long-term, modality-specific alterations in cognitive control. In this longitudinal fMRI study, we examined reactive cognitive control using a multimodal attention task in a large cohort of pmTBI (<i>N</i> = 236) and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (<i>N</i> = 212), across three timepoints (~1 week, ~4 months, and ~1 year) postinjury. Participants with LOC/PTA+ exhibited reduced task performance across both visual and auditory modalities, accompanied by persistent neural disruptions, indicating that greater injury severity is associated with more widespread, cross-modal impairments in attentional control. In contrast, participants without LOC/PTA− demonstrated increased neural activation early after injury, potentially reflecting compensatory recruitment in the auditory domain to maintain performance. However, this was accompanied by greater clinical burden (i.e., sleep disturbance, depression) and was followed by evidence of dysregulated control by ~1 year postinjury, suggesting that short-term neural compensation may carry longer-term consequences. Notably, neural differences across groups were primarily observed in the auditory domain, with alterations in frontotemporal and cerebellar regions. This modality-specific effect may reflect developmental shifts toward visual dominance during adolescence, which could increase processing demands for auditory information and render it more vulnerable to disruption following injury. Together these findings indicate that pmTBI is associated with persistent alterations in cognitive control processes that evolve over time as a function of injury severity.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70580","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148381972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Early Adulthood Signatures of Motherhood in Brain Aging","authors":"Wei Peng, James K. Rilling","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70591","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70591","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Major life transitions have been proposed to influence trajectories of brain aging, yet the timing and cognitive correlates of such divergence remain unclear. Motherhood has been associated with younger brain-predicted age in midlife, but whether similar signatures are already observable in early adulthood—and whether such signatures coincide with differences in cognitive performance—remains unknown. In over 1000 young adults (ages 22–37), brain-predicted age was estimated from structural MRI scans and cognition was assessed across fluid and crystallized domains. Mothers exhibited significantly younger brain-predicted age than non-mothers after adjustment for chronological age, intracranial volume (ICV), socioeconomic status and body mass index (BMI); no comparable association was observed between fathers and non-fathers. Regional analyses revealed a spatially distributed signature, with directionally consistent reductions across all 10 lobar regions, of which bilateral frontal, left parietal, and bilateral subcortical/cerebellar regions survived false discovery rate correction. The younger brain-age profile in mothers did not exhibit a graded association with number of children or the duration of parental experience, providing no support for a strictly linear cumulative exposure pattern in early adulthood. Despite younger-appearing brain anatomy, mothers did not exhibit superior cognitive performance. Instead, crystallized cognition was modestly lower in mothers after covariate adjustment, and a parallel pattern was observed in fathers, whereas fluid cognition did not significantly differ from non-parents in either sex. This cross-sex convergence in crystallized cognition, combined with the brain age effect observed only in mothers, suggests that structural and cognitive correlates of parenthood may have partially distinct origins. Collectively, these findings indicate that motherhood-related differences in brain predicted age are already observable within years of childbirth, albeit without concomitant cognitive advantages.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70591","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148381983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neural Correlates of Explicit Outcome Expectation Effects: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis","authors":"Junnan Zhou, Yiyang Xu, Tieyan Li, Xingyue Yang","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70594","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70594","url":null,"abstract":"<p>To investigate the characteristics of brain region activation associated with explicit outcome expectation effects in treatment contexts, and to identify core brain regions consistently involved across diverse experimental paradigms. A systematic search was conducted for studies published from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2025. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) studies investigating treatment expectation effects were included. In neuroimaging paradigms, these effects are commonly induced through explicit outcome expectations via verbal instructions or contextual cues. Risk of bias was assessed using the ROB 2.0 and ROBINS-I tools. Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis was performed using GingerALE 3.0.2 based on whole-brain activation coordinates. Results were visualized using Mango software. Sensitivity analyses were performed by excluding the study with the highest risk of bias and using a leave-one-study-out approach. Additionally, a qualitative synthesis of activation foci was conducted across four domains to address paradigm heterogeneity. A total of 21 articles with 855 subjects were included in this study, consisting of 17 randomized controlled trials and 4 non-randomized studies. The risk of bias assessment indicated that only five RCTs were rated as low risk, while approximately three-quarters of studies showed some concerns or high risk. Most studies modulated expectations through interventions such as verbal instruction and pain stimulation. Convergent neuroimaging studies implicated the insula, frontal lobe, striatum, and additional relevant brain regions. The ALE meta-analysis identified two significant activation clusters located in the caudate nucleus/lentiform nucleus and the red nucleus. Sensitivity analyses indicated that the majority of findings remained stable. Qualitative domain-based synthesis further revealed consistent striatal activation across all domains, together with distinct domain-specific activation patterns. The findings of this study suggest that explicit outcome expectation effects, as a core operationalized component of treatment expectation, do not rely on a single brain region but emerge from distributed and dynamically interacting neural systems that depend on reward expectation and information integration. The coordinated activity of multiple brain regions collectively supports the generation of explicit outcome expectations. The striatum serves as a shared core substrate across different expectancy domains, while domain-specific activation reflects functional specialization for distinct contexts. These findings provide important evidence for elucidating the neural correlates of explicit outcome expectation effects and establish a foundation for further brain mechanism-based intervention strategies.</p><p><b>Trial Registration:</b> PROSPERO: CRD420251074894</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70594","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148375327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Eric Mokri, Mathieu Landry, Jason da Silva Castanheira, Janine D. Mendola
{"title":"Neural Markers of Interocular Grouping During Binocular Rivalry With MEG","authors":"Eric Mokri, Mathieu Landry, Jason da Silva Castanheira, Janine D. Mendola","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70589","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70589","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Binocular rivalry (BR) occurs when incompatible images are simultaneously presented, one to each eye, and elicit perceptual alternations between image dominance and suppression. Remarkably, BR accommodates interocular grouping (IOG) such that portions of two globally coherent images shown separately to each eye, results in frequent global pattern perception. We investigated the neural correlates of BR and IOG with magnetoencephalography (MEG). Stimuli consisted of red or green orthogonal gratings flickering at 5 or 6.67 Hz, allowing for analysis of tagged fundamental, intermodulation frequencies, and steady-state visually evoked responses (<i>N</i> = 25). Our design included conditions with systematically increasing grouping demands; 2 or 4 complementary patches, with vertical or horizontal meridian image divisions. Participants reported their perception of dominant or mixed percepts, and the latter increased with grouping demands. IOG showed weaker fundamental power than BR in early visual cortex during perceptual dominance, while power for suppression was less affected in depth and topography. Multivariate logistic regression further highlighted differences between BR and IOG in V1 and V2, as well as higher-order visual areas (i.e., IP and LO). A support vector machine distinguished between dominance and suppression, with the highest accuracy near the time of the perceptual alternation. Interestingly, only the conditions with high IOG demands produced higher order intermodulation frequencies and significantly correlated with alternation rate in V1. Overall, we show evidence of a broad similarity for BR and IOG in neural representations across the visual cortex, as well as enhanced mechanisms of monocular image competition via segmentation and integration for IOG.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70589","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148375573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Correction to \"Directed Communication in Theta and Alpha Networks Supports Content Handling in Working Memory\".","authors":"","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70613","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70613","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":"e70613"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13369283/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148446103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tianye Zhai, Hong Gu, Anika Holton, Elanor Chang, Blaise B. Frederick, Thomas J. Ross, Yihong Yang, Amy C. Janes
{"title":"Benchmarking fMRI Denoising Pipelines","authors":"Tianye Zhai, Hong Gu, Anika Holton, Elanor Chang, Blaise B. Frederick, Thomas J. Ross, Yihong Yang, Amy C. Janes","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70561","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70561","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful tool for probing neuronal activity in vivo, but fMRI data are inherently noisy. To mitigate this, a wide range of denoising strategies have been developed, including volume censoring, anatomical component-based noise correction (aCompCor), ICA-based methods (e.g., AROMA, FIX), and multi-echo approaches (e.g., ME-ICA, tedana). These techniques are often applied in different combinations and have been predominantly evaluated on single-echo resting-state fMRI data—typically without incorporating more recent methodological advances known to improve modeling, such as order-independent “1-step regression”, modeling temporal autocorrelation (pre-whitening), and temporal shifting of physiological nuisance regressors. To fill this gap, we used a framework that incorporates these methods and benchmarked a range of denoising pipelines across task and resting-state, single- and multi-band, and single- and multi-echo fMRI datasets, using different combinations of standard denoising confounds. Pipeline performance was evaluated using temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR) and percentage remaining degrees-of-freedom (DoF), effectiveness of motion correction, and effectiveness of signal preservation. While pipelines only using ICA were insufficient, those that incorporated physiological nuisance regressors performed well. Additional improvements were observed when temporally shifted physiological regressors were accounted for. Based on these results, we provide recommendations for selecting denoising pipelines and emphasize the need for continued benchmarking as new methods are developed or applied in novel contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70561","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148360578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Duaa M Banaja, Enrique Torres Hernandez, Crystal G Franklin, P Mickle Fox, Chukwuemeka N Okafor, Brett C Ginsburg, Felipe S Salinas, John C Moring, Peter T Fox
{"title":"Brain Structural Abnormalities in Addiction Disorders: Transdiagnostic Meta-Analyses.","authors":"Duaa M Banaja, Enrique Torres Hernandez, Crystal G Franklin, P Mickle Fox, Chukwuemeka N Okafor, Brett C Ginsburg, Felipe S Salinas, John C Moring, Peter T Fox","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70551","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70551","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Addictions are commonly classified as either substance-use disorders (SUD) or behavioral addictions (BA). SUDs are well established in taxonomies of mental-health disorders. BAs are only recently recognized as mental-health disorders, with limited and conflicting categorizations. Within each category, individual diagnoses are based on objects of addiction. Despite addiction prevalence, no comprehensive coordinate-based meta-analysis (CBMA) has examined both SUD and BA. The overall goal of this study was to identify GM alterations associated with SUD and BA, both independently and jointly. To this end, a total of 108 peer-reviewed VBM studies reporting case-control contrasts in addiction disorders were identified: 83 reports across five SUD diagnoses (8206 participants); and 25 BA reports across two diagnoses (1572 participants). On these datasets, eight transdiagnostic alteration likelihood estimation (ALE) CBMAs were performed. Three primary ALEs computed cross-study neuroanatomical convergence for: (1) SUD; (2) BA; and (3) Pooled Addictions (SUD + BA). These three primary ALEs were supplemented by five ALE-to-ALE comparison analyses: interaction (SUD + BA to SUD and BA), overlap (SUD on BA), conjunction (SUD on BA), and contrast (SUD > BA; BA > SUD). The independently performed ALEs demonstrated largely distinct anatomical-alteration patterns, overlapping only in the caudate nucleus. The pooled ALE, however, yielded many (n = 24/34) alteration foci not identified in either independent ALE. All newly emerging foci were contributed to by both conditions (SUD and BA) and thus termed \"interactive.\" Functional decoding of all three ALEs consistently identified reward and reward-related cognitive operations as being performed by the brain-regions exhibiting structural alterations in addiction disorders.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":"e70551"},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13367133/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148436648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John C. Moring, Fatima T. Husain, Crystal Franklin, Emilia Kaniewska, Quintin Hecht, Amanda Flores, Danielle K. Mullen, Carlos Esquivel, Andrew Fallon, Suheily Lovelace, Patricia A. Resick, Stacey Young-McCaughan, Alan L. Peterson, Peter T. Fox, for the STRONG STAR Consortium
{"title":"Symptom Overlap and Neurobiological Similarities Between Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Tinnitus","authors":"John C. Moring, Fatima T. Husain, Crystal Franklin, Emilia Kaniewska, Quintin Hecht, Amanda Flores, Danielle K. Mullen, Carlos Esquivel, Andrew Fallon, Suheily Lovelace, Patricia A. Resick, Stacey Young-McCaughan, Alan L. Peterson, Peter T. Fox, for the STRONG STAR Consortium","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70582","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70582","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Many symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) overlap with the psychological sequelae of tinnitus, including sleep difficulty, concentration problems, hypervigilance, and irritability. Although these two disorders are clearly distinct, they are highly comorbid, may have shared etiology, and are among the top service-connected disabilities within the VA healthcare system. This study aimed to determine neuropathophysiological similarities and differences among veterans with both PTSD and tinnitus, tinnitus only, and healthy controls. Resting-state networks were identified by previous studies and extracted to examine functional connectivity patterns. Networks included the default mode network (DMN), auditory vigilance (AUDVIG), salience (SN), dorsal attention (DAN), and emotion (EMO) networks. Functional connectivity among specific brain regions was decreased among the tinnitus only group compared to the healthy control group and was further decreased when PTSD was present with tinnitus. Findings suggest that the additive and negative effects observed symptomatically may be explained by decreased functional connectivity, especially with respect to the DMN and AUDVIG networks.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70582","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148351847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yun Tian, Jiangtao Chen, Ziyuan Li, Li Gong, Qiang Liu
{"title":"Intrinsic Functional Architecture Reflects Individual Differences in Passive Working Memory: An Exploratory Resting-State fMRI Study","authors":"Yun Tian, Jiangtao Chen, Ziyuan Li, Li Gong, Qiang Liu","doi":"10.1002/hbm.70597","DOIUrl":"10.1002/hbm.70597","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Passive working memory (WM) is rarely detectable because it is thought to rely less on persistent neural firing, leaving a minimal trace in ongoing brain activity. This elusive nature poses a major challenge for exploring its neural basis. While the activity-silent working memory (ASWM) framework proposes that such latent representations are maintained through transient reconfiguration in intrinsic functional connectivity, tracking these rapid dynamics via functional MRI remains methodologically difficult. Alternatively, investigating the brain's intrinsic functional architecture provides insights into the baseline “neural scaffolding” that predisposes individuals to successful passive WM. To explore this, we combined pre-task resting-state fMRI, structural MRI, and behavioral data from a sequential change-detection paradigm in 151 healthy adults. Functional connectivity–behavior associations revealed that individual differences in passive WM performance were significantly reflected by intrinsic connections among large-scale networks encompassing dorsal attention, control, and sensorimotor. Granger causality analyses further revealed a group-level temporal dependency pattern linking these functional systems. Furthermore, exploratory structural analyses suggested spatial convergence between uncorrected cortical-thickness associations and certain functionally identified sensorimotor nodes. Overall, this study adopts an exploratory approach to demonstrate that baseline intrinsic functional architecture—complemented by preliminary structural findings—is significantly associated with individual differences in passive WM.</p>","PeriodicalId":13019,"journal":{"name":"Human Brain Mapping","volume":"47 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hbm.70597","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148351854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}