Marino L, Sudheimer K, Pabst D A, McLellan W A, Johnson J I
Neuroscience and Behavioural Biology Program, Psychology Department, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, USA.
J Anat. 2003 Jul;203(1):57-76. doi: 10.1046/j.1469-7580.2003.00199.x.
Cetacean (dolphin, whale and porpoise) brains are among the least studied mammalian brains because of the difficulty of collecting and histologically preparing such relatively rare and large specimens. Among cetaceans, there exist relatively few studies of the brain of the dwarf sperm whale (Kogia simus). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers a means of observing the internal structure of the brain when traditional histological procedures are not practical. Therefore, MRI has become a critical tool in the study of the brain of cetaceans and other large species. This paper represents the first MRI-based anatomically labelled three-dimensional description of the dwarf sperm whale brain. Coronal plane sections of the brain of a sub-adult dwarf sperm whale were originally acquired and used to produce virtual digital scans in the other two orthogonal spatial planes. A sequential set of images in all three planes has been anatomically labelled and displays the proportions and positions of major neuroanatomical features.
由于收集和进行组织学处理这类相对稀少且体积较大的标本存在困难，鲸类（海豚、鲸鱼和鼠海豚）的大脑是研究最少的哺乳动物大脑之一。在鲸类中，对小抹香鲸（小抹香鲸属）大脑的研究相对较少。当传统组织学方法不可行时，磁共振成像（MRI）提供了一种观察大脑内部结构的方法。因此，MRI已成为研究鲸类和其他大型物种大脑的关键工具。本文是第一篇基于MRI的对小抹香鲸大脑进行解剖学标记的三维描述。最初获取了一头亚成年小抹香鲸大脑的冠状面切片，并用于在其他两个正交空间平面上生成虚拟数字扫描。所有三个平面的一组连续图像都进行了解剖学标记，并展示了主要神经解剖特征的比例和位置。
