White matter association tracts underlying language and theory of mind: An investigation of 809 brains from the Human Connectome Project
Leo R. Zekelman,
Fan Zhang,
Nikos Makris,
Jianzhong He,
Yuqian Chen,
Tengfei Xue,
Daniela Liera,
Daniel L. Drane,
Yogesh Rathi,
Alexandra J. Golby,
Lauren J. O'Donnell
Affiliations
Leo R. Zekelman
Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Corresponding author at: Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
Fan Zhang
Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Nikos Makris
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, USA; Center for Morphometric Analysis, Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital and Psychiatric Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Jianzhong He
Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Institution of Information Processing and Automation, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China
Yuqian Chen
Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Tengfei Xue
Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
Daniela Liera
Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, USA
Daniel L. Drane
Department of Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA; Department of Pediatrics, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA; Department of Neurology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, US
Yogesh Rathi
Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Alexandra J. Golby
Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA; Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Lauren J. O'Donnell
Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Language and theory of mind (ToM) are the cognitive capacities that allow for the successful interpretation and expression of meaning. While functional MRI investigations are able to consistently localize language and ToM to specific cortical regions, diffusion MRI investigations point to an inconsistent and sometimes overlapping set of white matter tracts associated with these two cognitive domains. To further examine the white matter tracts that may underlie these domains, we use a two-tensor tractography method to investigate the white matter microstructure of 809 participants from the Human Connectome Project. 20 association white matter tracts (10 in each hemisphere) are uniquely identified by leveraging a neuroanatomist-curated automated white matter tract atlas. The fractional anisotropy (FA), mean diffusivity (MD), and number of streamlines (NoS) are measured for each white matter tract. Performance on neuropsychological assessments of semantic memory (NIH Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Test, TPVT) and emotion perception (Penn Emotion Recognition Test, PERT) are used to measure critical subcomponents of the language and ToM networks, respectively. Regression models are constructed to examine how structural measurements of left and right white matter tracts influence performance across these two assessments. We find that semantic memory performance is influenced by the number of streamlines of the left superior longitudinal fasciculus III (SLF-III), and emotion perception performance is influenced by the number of streamlines of the right SLF-III. Additionally, we find that performance on both semantic memory & emotion perception is influenced by the FA of the left arcuate fasciculus (AF). The results point to multiple, overlapping white matter tracts that underlie the cognitive domains of language and ToM. Results are discussed in terms of hemispheric dominance and concordance with prior investigations.
