The PaleoArchiNeo (PAN) human brain atlas: A dataset on a standard neuroanatomical MRI template following a phylogenetic approach

Abstract

Cortical atlases provide consistent divisions of the human cortex into areas that have common structural as well as meaningful and distinctive functional characteristics. They constitute a fundamental tool to study and quantify changes in healthy and pathological states. Historically, the most widely used atlases follow the cytoarchitecture described by Brodmann and/or the myeloarchitectonic characteristics described by Vogt-Vogt. These histological approaches have since been combined to the standard anatomical nomenclature of gyri and sulci, referring to the corresponding cytoarchitectonic area(s) present in a gyrus, when applicable or necessary (e.g. area 4 of Brodmann in the pre-central gyrus). More recently, common functional features depicted by resting state functional MRI have guided the division of the cortex into functional regions of interest. However, to date, there are no human MRI atlases that divide the cortex considering the common evolutionary changes experienced by the mammalian cortex.Hence, the present dataset describes the PaleoArchiNeo (PAN) Human Brain, a voxel-based atlas that divides the human cortex into five regions of interest (ROIs) following a phylogenetic approach: 1- archicortex, 2- paleocortex, 3- peri-archicortex, 4- proisocortex, 5- neocortex, and thirty neocortical sub-ROIs that follow the gyral Terminologia Anatomica.The masks of the ROIs and sub-ROIs were segmented on the T1-weighted MNI ICBM 152 2009c symmetric average brain MRI model, the latest version of the most widely used standard brain template. The segmentations have been performed manually by anatomist experts, following the MRI anatomical landmarks that have been previously described, correlated, and validated with histology by other groups.

Keywords

• Atlas
• Human brain
• Cerebral cortex
• MRI
• Phylogenetic
• Paleocortex