Barrick Thomas R, Lawes I Nigel, Mackay Clare E, Clark Chris A
Centre for Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Cardiac and Vascular Sciences, St George's University of London, UK.
Cereb Cortex. 2007 Mar;17(3):591-8. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhk004. Epub 2006 Apr 20.
Structural and functional asymmetry of the human brain has been well documented using techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, asymmetry of underlying white matter connections is less well understood. We applied an MRI technique known as diffusion tensor tractography to reveal the morphology of the white matter in vivo by mapping directions of maximum water diffusion in brain tissue. White matter pathway asymmetry was investigated in a normalized image data set of 30 right-handed young healthy individuals. We identified, for the first time, a rightwardly asymmetric pathway connecting the posterior temporal lobe to the superior parietal lobule. This pathway may be related to auditory spatial attention and working memory for which there is evidence for a rightward laterality from functional imaging studies. Additional leftward asymmetries connecting the parietal and frontal lobes to the temporal lobe may be more closely related to laterality of language.
利用磁共振成像（MRI）等技术，人类大脑的结构和功能不对称已得到充分记录。然而，潜在白质连接的不对称性却鲜为人知。我们应用了一种名为扩散张量纤维束成像的MRI技术，通过绘制脑组织中最大水扩散方向来揭示活体白质的形态。在30名右利手年轻健康个体的标准化图像数据集中研究了白质通路的不对称性。我们首次发现了一条连接颞叶后部与顶叶上小叶的向右不对称通路。这条通路可能与听觉空间注意力和工作记忆有关，功能成像研究有证据表明其存在右侧优势。连接顶叶和额叶与颞叶的其他向左不对称可能与语言优势更密切相关。
