Cortical and subcortical mapping of the human allostatic-interoceptive system using 7 Tesla fMRI

The brain continuously anticipates the body's energetic needs and prepares to meet them before they arise-a process called allostasis. To support allostasis, the brain continually models the body's sensory state, a process known as interoception. Here we replicate and extend a large-scale system that supports allostasis and interoception in the human brain using ultrahigh precision 7 Tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (n = 90), improving precision in subgenual and pregenual anterior cingulate topography and expanding brainstem nuclei mapping. Our functional connectivity analyses provide corroborating evidence for more than 96% of the anatomical connections documented in nonhuman animal tract-tracing studies. This system also includes regions of dense intrinsic connectivity throughout the system, some of which were identified previously as part of the backbone of neural communication across the brain. These results reinforce the existing evidence for a whole-brain system that supports the modeling and regulation of the body's internal milieu.