Comparative study of cross-modal cortical transcriptomics

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre 

The human cortical architecture exhibits complex functional divisions and organizational patterns, which are often altered in various psychiatric disorders, with these changes being closely regulated at the molecular level. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying cortical organizational patterns relies on transcriptomic data at the whole-cortex scale. Historically, the Allen Human Brain Atlas (AHBA) has been used to correlate different macroscopic networks, deviant patterns, and gene expression, providing insights into the molecular mechanisms. However, due to the limitations of microarray sequencing, while the AHBA data provides transcriptomic information at whole-cortex spatial resolution, it is constrained by sample size and lacks information on specific cell types. Recently, the release of human single-nucleus datasets has partly addressed these shortcomings, though due to sampling constraints, these datasets do not provide full cortical coverage across brain regions. Therefore, combining the strengths of both datasets can deepen our understanding of the complex molecular mechanisms underlying the brain cortex. A key question is whether data from different modalities can represent similar cortical transcriptional patterns. In this study, we analyzed the consistencies and differences between two modalities of data in representing cortical transcriptional patterns.