Aperiodic neural activity links electromagnetic and hemodynamic representations of domain-general cognitive demand across the cortical hierarchy

Abstract

The human brain demonstrates remarkable flexibility and capacity for domain-general cognitive control, allowing us to perform diverse and complex tasks. Central to this ability is the multiple- demand (MD) network, a domain-general system that is robustly engaged during demanding tasks in fMRI studies. However, the electrophysiological signatures underlying these domain-general responses remain elusive. While recent research has implicated aperiodic neural activity as a promising candidate, the limited spatial resolution of non-invasive electrophysiology has left it unresolved how this aperiodic signal relates to demand-related activity within the MD network and whether this relationship reflects a broader organizational principle across the cortex. To address these questions, we used a multimodal fusion framework to integrate fMRI and magnetoencephalography (MEG) data acquired while participants performed a diverse set of cognitive control tasks. We found that raw MEG- fMRI correspondence was strongest in unimodal sensorimotor cortices and progressively decreased toward transmodal association cortex during cognitive control tasks, revealing a hierarchical decline in correspondence between the electromagnetic and hemodynamic signals measured by these technologies. However, the proportion of this variance that was attributable to cognitive demand and carried by aperiodic signals showed the reverse gradient, systematically increasing along the sensorimotor-association axis. In particular, in the MD network, aperiodic broadband power showed the strongest demand-specific cross-modal commonality, outperforming canonical oscillatory components. These findings reveal two opposing hierarchical gradients: overall MEG-fMRI correspondence across all electrophysiological signals decreased toward association cortex, whereas the proportion attributable to aperiodic signals associated with cognitive demand increased. Our results identify aperiodic neural activity as a key electrophysiological substrate of cognitive control and a bridge linking electromagnetic and hemodynamic representations across the cortical hierarchy.