Event Abstract

Back to Event

Combining cytoarchitectonic atlas information with diffusion tensor imaging – detailed mapping of transcallosal fibres of the inferior parietal lobule

Svenja Caspers1*, Simon B. Eickhoff1, 2, Karl Zilles1, 3, 4 and Katrin Amunts1, 5
  • 1 Research Centre Juelich, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Germany
  • 2 Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Medical Psychology, Germany
  • 3 RWTH Aachen University, Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, Germany
  • 4 Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance, JARA-BRAIN, Germany
  • 5 Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, C. and O. Vogt Institute for Brain Research, Germany

The human inferior parietal lobule (IPL) is functionally diverse, being involved (from rostral to caudal parts) in action planning and control, (spatial) attention processes, and mathematical cognition, language processing, and moral reasoning. This functional heterogeneity is also reflected at the structural level, i.e. the IPL is composed of seven cyto- and receptorarchitectonically distinct areas. Their overall connectivity patterns shift when moving from rostral to caudal IPL which reflect their involvement in different functional brain networks: while rostral IPL areas are mainly connected with sensorimotor cortices, middle and caudal IPL are more pronouncedly connected to prefrontal, caudal superior parietal, lateral occipital, and temporal areas. Diseases thus differentially affect different parts of the IPL. The interhemispheric communication via the corpus callosum is of particular interest since it is frequently affected in neurologic or psychiatric diseases such as Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia or depression. This is of particular interest with regard to the IPL since susceptibility for disease-related affections varies between different IPL areas. Determining which transcallosal fibre tracts are particularly affected might shed new light onto the neurobiological correlates of such disconnection syndromes. We thus mapped the transcallosal fibres of different IPL areas, using diffusion tensor imaging (3T, Siemens TIM-Trio, 60 directions) in a group of 39 subjects. The cytoarchitectonically defined seven IPL areas of the JuBrain atlas were used as seed regions, without selection of predefined targets. Probabilistic fibre tracking (using FDT toolbox of FSL) revealed distinct transcallosal fibre tracts for each IPL area. These are located next to each other in the caudal part of the body of the corpus callosum, arranged according to the rostro-caudal sequence of the IPL areas, with very little overlap between the different tracts. Thus, a detailed map of the interhemispheric IPL connections is created. Such high level of detail could be gained by using a microscopically derived map of the brain’s grey matter, as available from cytoarchitectonic maps. Such atlas information accurately informs connectivity mapping for specific detection of fibre tracts by integrating microscopically derived anatomical information with in-vivo fibre tracking algorithms. This allows precisely studying structural differences of the corpus callosum, as e.g. allocating white matter alterations occurring during neurodegenerative or psychiatric diseases to individual transcallosal tracts originating in different cortical areas.

Acknowledgements

Funding was granted by the Human Brain Project (R01-MH074457-01A1; SBE), the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association within the Helmholtz Alliance on Systems Biology (Human Brain Model; KZ, SBE), the Helmholtz Alliance for Mental Health in an Aging Society (HelMA; KZ, KA), and the portfolio theme “Supercomputing and Modeling the Human brain” by the Helmholtz Association (KA).

References

Benedetti F, Yeh PH, Bellani M, Radaelli D, Nicoletti MA, Poletti S, Falini A, Dallaspezia S, Colombo C, Scotti G, Smeraldi E, Soares JC, Brambilla P (2011) Disruption of white matter integrity in bipolar depression as a possible structural marker of illness. Biol Psychiatry 69(4), 309-17

Caspers S, Eickhoff SB, Geyer S, Scheperjans F, Mohlberg H, Zilles K, Amunts K (2008) The human inferior parietal lobule in stereotaxic space. Brain Struct Funct 212, 481-495.

Caspers S, Eickhoff SB, Rick T, von Kapri A, Kuhlen T, Huang R, Shah NJ, Zilles K (2011) Probabilistic fibre tract analysis of cytoarchitectonically defined human inferior parietal lobule areas reveals similarities to macaques. NeuroImage 58, 362-380.

Caspers S, Eickhoff SB, Zilles K, Amunts K (2013) Microstructural grey matter parcellation and its relevance for connectome analyses. NeuroImage 80, 18-26.

Di Paola M, Spalletta G, Caltagirone C (2010) In vivo structural neuroanatomy of corpus callosum in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment using different MRI techniques: a review. J Alzheimers Dis 20(1):67-95.

Mars RB, Jbabdi S, Sallet J, O'Reilly JX, Croxson PL, Olivier E, Noonan MP, Bergmann C, Mitchell AS, Baxter MG, Behrens TE, Johansen-Berg H, Tomassini V, Miller KL, Rushworth MF (2011) Diffusion-weighted imaging tractography-based parcellation of the human parietal cortex and comparison with human and macaque resting-state functional connectivity. J Neurosci 31 (11), 4087-4100.

Puri BK (2010) Progressive structural brain changes in schizophrenia. Expert Rev Neurother 10(1), 33-42.

Keywords: inferior parietal, Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fibre tractography, cytoarchitectonic atlas, Corpus Callosum

Conference: Imaging the brain at different scales: How to integrate multi-scale structural information?, Antwerp, Belgium, 2 Sep - 6 Sep, 2013.

Presentation Type: Poster presentation

Topic: Poster session

Citation: Caspers S, Eickhoff SB, Zilles K and Amunts K (2013). Combining cytoarchitectonic atlas information with diffusion tensor imaging – detailed mapping of transcallosal fibres of the inferior parietal lobule. Front. Neuroinform. Conference Abstract: Imaging the brain at different scales: How to integrate multi-scale structural information?. doi: 10.3389/conf.fninf.2013.10.00035

Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.

The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.

Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.

For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.

Received: 01 Aug 2013; Published Online: 31 Aug 2013.

* Correspondence: Dr. Svenja Caspers, Research Centre Juelich, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Juelich, Germany, s.caspers@fz-juelich.de