Resting state correlations in fMRI signal reveal the organization of the brain’s functional networks 

What properties define a brain area? To fully understand any system, one must know how its constituent parts are organized, and how they interact. Here, cognitive neuroscientist Gagan Wig illustrates how one can leverage intrinsic activity of the brain “at rest” to learn about these fundamental properties. Remarkably, he demonstrates that one can learn a great deal about, for example, the organization and function of visual and motor areas, via the careful study of patterns of brain activity from an individual who is fully at rest, and therefore performing neither a visual nor a motor task!
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Relevant papers:
Wig, G. S., Laumann, T. O., & Petersen, S. E. (2014). An approach for parcellating human cortical areas using resting-state correlations. Neuroimage, 93, 276-291.
Wig, G. S., Laumann, T. O., Cohen, A. L., Power, J. D., Nelson, S. M., Glasser, M. F., ... & Petersen, S. E. (2013). Parcellating an individual subject's cortical and subcortical brain structures using snowball sampling of resting-state correlations. Cerebral cortex, 24(8), 2036-2054.
Nelson, S. M., Cohen, A. L., Power, J. D., Wig, G. S., Miezin, F. M., Wheeler, M. E., ... & Petersen, S. E. (2010). A parcellation scheme for human left lateral parietal cortex. Neuron, 67(1), 156-170.
Cohen, A. L., Fair, D. A., Dosenbach, N. U., Miezin, F. M., Dierker, D., Van Essen, D. C., ... & Petersen, S. E. (2008). Defining functional areas in individual human brains using resting functional connectivity MRI. Neuroimage, 41(1), 45-57.