Humans have a longer period of cortical maturation across depth and hierarchy than macaques

Abstract

Postnatal brain development in primates involves prolonged structural maturation of the cortex, laying the foundation for advanced perceptual and cognitive functions. In humans, cortical development is thought to progress along a hierarchical gradient from early-maturing sensorimotor regions to later-developing association areas. However, developmental changes across cortical depth, which contribute to both local computation and large-scale network integration, have been largely unexplored. It also remains unclear which features of these maturational trajectories are conserved across primates and how they may have been further extended or modified in humans. Using the T1-weighted/T2-weighted (T1w/T2w) MRI ratio as a noninvasive measure of cortical microarchitecture, we systematically compared depth-dependent and regional developmental trajectories in humans and macaques. We identified a conserved "inside-out" gradient of maturation, with deeper cortical depths exhibiting steeper increases in T1w/T2w ratio and earlier plateaus than superficial depths. This depth-dependent pattern was embedded within a broader hierarchical gradient of maturation across the cortical surface, extending from sensorimotor regions to association cortex. While the spatial structure of these gradients was shared across species, humans exhibited markedly prolonged development across the entire cortical hierarchy, including both sensory and association cortices, and across cortical depths. These findings suggest that conserved developmental gradients are elaborated in humans to support an extended window of postnatal plasticity, enabling the experience-dependent refinement of cortical circuits that underlie the complex, integrative functions central to human perception and cognition.