Mapping the Trade-Offs That Shape Mammalian Brain Network Architecture
A brain's wiring must satisfy conflicting pressures, from the outside world (be capable) and from the inside (stay within finite resources). These pressures often have opposing requirements. Prior work studies these trade-offs mostly between 2-3 pressures at a time, and thus cannot say how many pressures shape brain wiring or for which trade-off brains decide. To see all possible trade-offs at…
The architecture of mammalian brain networks is shaped by a set of competing pressures, both external and internal. These pressures often present conflicting requirements, and their interplay is not fully understood. Previous research has examined trade-offs between just 2-3 factors at a time, limiting the ability to determine which pressures most significantly influence brain wiring or the specific trade-offs prioritized by brains.
To comprehensively explore all potential trade-offs and identify the most crucial forces, researchers created 25,000 artificial brain networks, each characterized by 29 distinct network features. Subsequently, they mapped 635 human brains (ages 6-22) and 224 mammalian brains (representing 12 taxonomic orders) within this multi-dimensional property space.
This property space proved to be triangular, with three primary forces at play: computational capability, robustness to damage, and metabolic efficiency. Importantly, no brain network is perfectly optimized across all three factors simultaneously. Instead, biological brains tend to cluster in a small, specialized area within this triangle, where they accept a higher metabolic cost in exchange for enhanced computational capability and increased robustness.
Developmental and evolutionary processes drive brains along the same trajectory, with human maturation initially prioritizing capability, followed by an optimization for efficiency. Through this investigation, the study highlights the triangular trade-off between metabolic efficiency, computational capacity, and robustness, and underscores the limited region occupied by brains within this trade-off space.
This insight becomes apparent only when considering a broad, multi-property, and cross-species perspective.
Written by urgent.news from bioRxiv's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
