Frontiers in Neuroanatomy (Apr 2015)

Parcellation of the Primary Cerebral Cortices based on Local Connectivity Profiles

  • Qiaojun eLi,
  • Qiaojun eLi,
  • Ming eSong,
  • Ming eSong,
  • Lingzhong eFan,
  • Lingzhong eFan,
  • Yong eLiu,
  • Yong eLiu,
  • Tianzi eJiang,
  • Tianzi eJiang,
  • Tianzi eJiang,
  • Tianzi eJiang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnana.2015.00050
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

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Primary cerebral cortices are of great importance for our understanding of the human brain. Although their functions are relatively monomodal, primary cerebral cortices have been suggested to compromise structurally and functionally distinct subregions from many evidences, for example, cytoarchitectionics, myeloarchitectonics and functional brain imaging. In recent years, structural connectivity-based parcellation using diffusion MRI has been extensively used to do parcellation of subcortical areas and association cortex. However, it has rarely been employed to primary cerebral cortices. In connectivity-based parcellation, connectivity profiles are very vital. Different researchers used different information of connectivity profiles, such as global connectivity profiles (the connectivity information from seed to the whole brain) and long connectivity profiles (the connectivity information from seed to other brain regions after excluding the seed). Given that primary cerebral cortices are rich of local hierarchical connections and possess high local functional connectivity profiles, we proposed that local connectivity profiles (the connectivity information in the seed region of interest (ROI)) might be used for parcellating primary cerebral cortices. Global, long and local connectivity profiles were compared on M1, A1, S1 and V1. We found that results using the three were all in good consistency with cytoarchitectonic results. More importantly, results using local connectivity profiles showed less inter-subject variability than results using the other two. This suggests that for parcellation of primary cerebral cortices local connectivity profiles are superior to global and long connectivity profiles. This also infers us that different connectivity profiles should be adopted according to the characteristics of the cerebral cortices.

Keywords