Association fibre pathways of the brain: parallel observations from diffusion spectrum imaging and autoradiography.

By Jeremy D. Schmahmann, Deepak N. Pandya, Ruopeng Wang, Guangping Dai, Helen D'Arceuil, A. de Crespigny, Van J. Wedeen. Brain : a journal of neurology, 2007

1,054 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Understanding the long association pathways that convey cortical connections is a critical step in exploring the anatomic substrates of cognition in health and disease. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is able to demonstrate fibre tracts non-invasively, but present approaches have been hampered by the inability to visualize fibres that have intersecting trajectories (crossing fibres), and by the lack of a detailed map of the origins, course and terminations of the white matter pathways. We therefore used diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) that has the ability to resolve crossing fibres at the scale of single MRI voxels, and identified the long association tracts in the monkey brain. We then compared the results with available expositions of white matter pathways in the monkey using autoradiographic histological tract tracing. We identified 10 long association fibre bundles with DSI that match the observations in the isotope material: emanating from the parietal lobe, the superior longitudinal fasciculus subcomponents I, II and III; from the occipital-parietal region, the fronto-occipital fasciculus; from the temporal lobe, the middle longitudinal fasciculus and from rostral to caudal, the uncinate fasciculus, extreme capsule and arcuate fasciculus; from the occipital-temporal region, the inferior longitudinal fasciculus; and from the cingulate gyrus, the cingulum bundle. We suggest new interpretations of the putative functions of these fibre bundles based on the cortical areas that they link. These findings using DSI and validated with reference to autoradiographic tract tracing in the monkey represent a considerable advance in the understanding of the fibre pathways in the cerebral white matter. By replicating the major features of these tracts identified by histological techniques in monkey, we show that DSI has the potential to cast new light on the organization of the human brain in the normal state and in clinical disorders.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7baecdf494fd6e352add6993f12cc1554ee5b645

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Citations in the corpus

Tractography - where do we go from here? (2011, positive): “Alternatives have also been suggested (Aganj et al., 2010; Descoteaux et al., 2007; Hess et al., 2006; Wedeen et al., 2008) and successfully applied to studying the architecture of white matter in humans (Hag-mann et al., 2007) and non-human animals (Schmahmann et al., 2007).”
Using diffusion imaging to study human connectional anatomy. (2009, background): “F or p er so na l u se o nl y. to autoradiographic tract tracing findings in the same species (Schmahmann et al. 2007).”
Structure and function of complex brain networks (2013, background): “Tract tracing has an important role to play for the study of anatomical connections in animal models, particularly in non-human primates,(43) and it is of vital importance for validating anatomical data derived from noninvasive imaging technology.(44) To the extent that such validation has been carr”
Tract Profiles of White Matter Properties: Automating Fiber-Tract Quantification (2012, methodology): “Tractography is widely considered the most accurate method for identifying the white matter fascicles in the living human brain, and has been validated in artificially constructed fiber structures (called phantoms), animals and humans [10–12].”
Developmental Stages and Sex Differences of White Matter and Behavioral Development through Adolescence: A Longitudinal Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) Study (2013, positive): “Both of these tracts link orbital and medial prefrontal cortical regions to medial temporal regions, with the cingulum functioning as a dorsal limbic pathway, and the uncinate as a ventral limbic pathway (Mori et al., 2005; Schmahmann et al., 2007).”
Short frontal lobe connections of the human brain. (2012, methodology): “Results The 3D reconstruction of the frontal lobe surface and corresponding cytoarchitectonic areas according to Brodmann’s division (Brodmann, 1909) are shown in Fig.”
Functionally linked resting‐state networks reflect the underlying structural connectivity architecture of the human brain (2009, background): “White matter pathways are bundles of huge numbers of axons that connect large neuronal populations over long distances [Schmahmann and Pandya, 2006; Schmahmann et al., 2007; Vogt and Pandya, 1987; Wakana et al., 2004].”
The Neural Architecture of the Language Comprehension Network: Converging Evidence from Lesion and Connectivity Analyses (2011, background): “Evidence for a direct link between BA 47 and mid-lateral temporal cortex comes from tract tracing work in the monkey brain (Petrides and Pandya, 1988, 2006; Schmahmann et al., 2007).”
Anatomically related grey and white matter abnormalities in adolescent-onset schizophrenia. (2007, background): “The arcuate fasciculus has been investigated recently in detail in vivo by DTI tractography studies in human brains (Catani et al., 2005; Makris et al., 2005; Parker et al., 2005; Powell et al., 2006; Schmahmann et al., 2007) and confirmed to connect Wernicke’s area (rostrally bordered by Heschl’s g”
Exploring the brain network: a review on resting-state fMRI functional connectivity. (2010, background): “Combining resting-state fMRI recordings with DTI data identified an important role for the cingulum tract in interconnecting the key regions of the default mode network, verifying the direct structural axonal connections between the posterior cingulate cortex and medial frontal cortex known from ani”