Brain and Language Lab, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Department of Neurology, Section of Biomagnetism, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 Mar 3;10(1):3887. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-60609-y.
Auditory cortex volume and shape differences have been observed in the context of phonetic learning, musicianship and dyslexia. Heschl's gyrus, which includes primary auditory cortex, displays large anatomical variability across individuals and hemispheres. Given this variability, manual labelling is the gold standard for segmenting HG, but is time consuming and error prone. Our novel toolbox, called 'Toolbox for the Automated Segmentation of HG' or TASH, automatically segments HG in brain structural MRI data, and extracts measures including its volume, surface area and cortical thickness. TASH builds upon FreeSurfer, which provides an initial segmentation of auditory regions, and implements further steps to perform finer auditory cortex delineation. We validate TASH by showing significant relationships between HG volumes obtained using manual labelling and using TASH, in three independent datasets acquired on different scanners and field strengths, and by showing good qualitative segmentation. We also present two applications of TASH, demonstrating replication and extension of previously published findings of relationships between HG volumes and (a) phonetic learning, and (b) musicianship. In sum, TASH effectively segments HG in a fully automated and reproducible manner, opening up a wide range of applications in the domains of expertise, disease, genetics and brain plasticity.
在语音学习、音乐才能和阅读障碍的背景下,已经观察到听觉皮层的体积和形状差异。包括初级听觉皮层在内的 Heschl 回在个体和半球之间显示出很大的解剖学变异性。鉴于这种可变性,手动标记是分割 HG 的金标准,但既耗时又容易出错。我们的新工具箱称为“用于自动分割 HG 的工具箱”或 TASH,可自动分割脑结构 MRI 数据中的 HG,并提取包括其体积、表面积和皮质厚度在内的度量值。TASH 基于 FreeSurfer,它提供了听觉区域的初始分割,并实施了进一步的步骤来进行更精细的听觉皮层描绘。我们通过在三个不同的扫描仪和场强上采集的三个独立数据集,展示了使用手动标记和 TASH 获得的 HG 体积之间的显著关系,验证了 TASH 的有效性,并通过良好的定性分割展示了 TASH 的有效性。我们还介绍了 TASH 的两个应用,展示了 HG 体积与(a)语音学习和(b)音乐才能之间的先前发表的关系的复制和扩展。总之,TASH 以全自动和可重复的方式有效地分割 HG,为专业知识、疾病、遗传学和大脑可塑性等领域的广泛应用开辟了道路。