Assimopoulos Stephania, Warrington Shaun, Folloni Davide, Bryant Katherine, Tang Wei, Jbabdi Saad, Heilbronner Sarah, Mars Rogier B, Sotiropoulos Stamatios N
Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, UK.
Nash Family Department of Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jun 11:2025.04.29.651254. doi: 10.1101/2025.04.29.651254.
Despite their importance for brain function, cortico-subcortical white matter tracts are under-represented in diffusion MRI tractography studies. Their non-invasive mapping is more challenging and less explored compared to other major cortico-cortical bundles. We introduce a set of standardised tractography protocols for delineating tracts between the cortex and various deep subcortical structures, including the caudate, putamen, amygdala, thalamus and hippocampus. To enable comparative studies, our protocols are designed for both human and macaque brains. We demonstrate how tractography reconstructions follow topographical principles obtained from tracers in the macaque and how these translate to humans. We show that the proposed protocols are robust against data quality and preserve aspects of individual variability stemming from family structure in humans. Lastly, we demonstrate the value of these species-matched protocols in mapping homologous grey matter regions in humans and macaques, both in cortex and subcortex.
尽管皮质-皮质下白质束对脑功能至关重要，但在扩散磁共振成像纤维束成像研究中，它们的呈现却不足。与其他主要的皮质-皮质束相比，它们的无创性映射更具挑战性且研究较少。我们引入了一套标准化的纤维束成像协议，用于描绘皮质与各种深部皮质下结构（包括尾状核、壳核、杏仁核、丘脑和海马体）之间的纤维束。为了开展比较研究，我们的协议针对人类和猕猴大脑进行了设计。我们展示了纤维束成像重建如何遵循从猕猴示踪剂获得的地形学原理，以及这些原理如何转化到人类身上。我们表明，所提出的协议对数据质量具有鲁棒性，并保留了人类家族结构所产生的个体变异性方面。最后，我们展示了这些物种匹配协议在绘制人类和猕猴同源灰质区域（包括皮质和皮质下区域）方面的价值。
