Inserm, UMR 1253, Imaging and Brain (iBrain), Université de Tours, Tours, France -
Department of Neurosurgery, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France -
J Neurosurg Sci. 2021 Dec;65(6):590-604. doi: 10.23736/S0390-5616.21.05391-1. Epub 2021 May 3.
The inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) is a large association white matter tract that interconnects, in a bidirectional manner, the occipital cortex to anterior temporal structures. In view of both its pattern of cortical projections and its recently evidenced multilayered anatomical organization, the ILF has been supposed to be vital for maintaining a wide range of cognitive and affective processes operating on the visual modality. As tumors commonly damage the temporal cortex, an updated knowledge of the functional anatomy of this ventral tract is needed to better map and monitor on-line its potential functions and thus to improve surgical outcomes. In this review, we first describe the gross anatomy of the ILF, its array of cortical terminations and its different layers. We then provide a comprehensive review of the functions that have been assigned to the tract. We successively address its role in object and face recognition, visual emotion recognition, language and semantic, including reading, and memory. It is especially shown that the ILF is critically involved in visually-guided behaviors, as its breakdown, both in sudden neurosurgical and progressive neurodegenerative diseases, is commonly associated with visual-specific neuropsychological syndromes (e.g. prosopagnosia and pure alexia, and so on). In the last section, we discuss the extent to which the ILF can reorganize in response to glioma infiltration and to surgery, and provide some reflections on how its intraoperative mapping may be refined.
下纵束（ILF）是一个大型的联合白质束，以双向方式连接枕叶皮质与前颞叶结构。鉴于其皮质投射模式及其最近证实的多层次解剖组织，ILF 被认为对维持广泛的视觉模态操作的认知和情感过程至关重要。由于肿瘤通常会损害颞叶皮质，因此需要更新对这条腹侧束的功能解剖学的认识，以便更好地绘制和监测其潜在功能，并提高手术效果。在这篇综述中，我们首先描述了 ILF 的大体解剖结构、其皮质终止区域及其不同的层面。然后，我们对已分配给该束的功能进行了全面的综述。我们依次探讨了它在物体和面部识别、视觉情感识别、语言和语义（包括阅读）以及记忆方面的作用。特别表明，ILF 在视觉引导行为中起着至关重要的作用，因为无论是在突发的神经外科手术还是进行性神经退行性疾病中，它的损伤通常与视觉特异性神经心理综合征（如面孔失认症和纯失读症等）相关。在最后一节中，我们讨论了 ILF 在应对胶质瘤浸润和手术时的重组程度，并对如何完善其术中映射进行了一些思考。
