On navigating the human cerebral cortex: Response to ‘in praise of tedious anatomy’

Individual variability of the human cerebral cortex is a source of both fascination and frustration. The fascination arises because variability in cortical structure and function may account for many aspects of our unique personalities and cognitive capabilities. For neuroimagers, the frustration arises because variability presents serious obstacles when attempting to assign particular functional activation patterns to specific cortical areas. Devlin and Poldrack cogently summarize many of the key issues, and they make useful suggestions for linking function to anatomy using a standardized stereotaxic space. This commentary provides a broader perspective on the nature of individual variability that has implications for the choice of strategies used to compensate for variability. It also includes information about the actual differences between various registration strategies and introduces a new strategy for converting neuroimaging data to a standard stereotaxic space.