Department of Neurobiology, The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Cereb Cortex. 2012 Sep;22(9):2016-23. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr277. Epub 2011 Oct 8.
The ability to image the cortex laminar arrangements in vivo is one of the holy grails of neuroscience. Recent studies have visualized the cortical layers ex vivo and in vivo (on a small region of interest) using high-resolution T(1)/T(2) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In this study, we used inversion-recovery (IR) MRI to increase the sensitivity of MRI toward cortical architecture and achieving whole-brain characterization of the layers, in vivo, in 3D on humans and rats. Using the IR measurements, we computed 3D signal intensity plots along the cortex termed corticograms to characterize cortical substructures. We found that cluster analyses of the multi-IR images along the cortex divides it into at least 6 laminar compartments. To validate our observations, we compared the IR-MRI analysis with histology and revealed a correspondence, although these 2 measures do not represent similar quantities. The abilities of the method to segment the cortex into layers were demonstrated on the striate cortex (visualizing the stripe of Gennari) and on the frontal cortex. We conclude that the presented methodology can serve as means to study and characterize individual cortical architecture and organization.
能够对活体皮层的层状结构进行成像，是神经科学的一大追求。最近的研究已经使用高分辨率 T1/T2 磁共振成像（MRI）对皮质层进行了离体和在体（在小的感兴趣区域）可视化。在这项研究中，我们使用反转恢复（IR）MRI 来提高 MRI 对皮质结构的敏感性，并在人体和大鼠的三维全脑范围内实现了对皮质层的特征描述。通过使用 IR 测量，我们沿着皮质计算了 3D 信号强度图，称为皮质图，以描述皮质亚结构。我们发现，对沿皮质的多 IR 图像进行聚类分析将其分为至少 6 个层状隔室。为了验证我们的观察结果，我们将 IR-MRI 分析与组织学进行了比较，结果显示存在对应关系，尽管这两种方法并不代表类似的量。该方法在纹状皮层（可视化杰纳里条纹）和额皮质上对皮层进行分层的能力得到了证明。我们的结论是，所提出的方法可以用于研究和描述个体皮质结构和组织。
