10/We sincerely thank the 132 research sites worldwide for data sharing, and our lab members for their enormous efforts to data curation, quality control, and preprocessing.

9/Together, our findings establish a unified neurodevelopmental framework centered on a dominant lifespan S-A growth axis, linking functional gradient maturation to evolutionary hierarchy, segregation–integration dynamics, structural maturation, and cognitive spectrum development.

8/These lifespan growth patterns were highly robust across sensitivity analyses: stricter motion control, split-half replication, leave-one-site-out, bootstrap, and balanced resampling.

7/We found a progressive strengthening of alignment between age-specific functional gradients and the adult cognitive spectrum, reflecting the developmental convergence of cortical organization toward adult cognitive-functional topography.

6/Across the lifespan, the S-A gradient coevolves with geometric distance, cortical thickness, and T1w/T2w: geometric coupling diminishes during development, and the cortical thickness, but not T1w/T2w, growth axis aligns with the functional S-A growth axis.

5/Using graph theoretical analysis, we found distinct nonlinear lifespan trajectories of segregation and integration, with the lifespan S-A growth axes of regional clustering and efficiency aligned with that of the canonical connectome gradient.

4/We systematically delineated the lifespan growth trajectories of the S-A gradient at the global, system and regional levels. Pronounced gradient changes are predominantly observed during the first decade, with continued refinement extending into mid-adulthood.

3/We identify three critical neurodevelopmental milestones: initiation (third trimester to perinatal period), establishment (infancy to early childhood), and expansion-stabilization (late childhood to adulthood).

2/We show lifespan changes in the sensorimotor-association (S-A) gradient in the cortical functional hierarchy using multimodal neuroimaging data from 33,247 participants aged 32 postmenstrual weeks to 80 years.

1/Excited to share our new paper: Spatiotemporal dynamics of the human cortical functional hierarchy across the lifespan t.co/nCR62ldB50 @MingruiXia @YongHe @ShuyuLi @debinz.bsky.social @TengdaZhao......