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The central sulcus is probably one of the most studied folds in the human brain, owing to its clear relationship with primary sensory-motor functional areas. However, due to the difficulty of estimating the trajectories of the U-shape fibres from diffusion MRI, the short structural connectivity of this sulcus remains relatively unknown. In this context, we studied the spatial organization of these U-shape fibres along the central sulcus. Based on high quality diffusion MRI data of 100 right-handed subjects and state-of-the-art pre-processing pipeline, we first define a connectivity space that provides a comprehensive and continuous description of the short-range anatomical connectivity around the central sulcus at both the individual and group levels. We then infer the presence of five major U-shape fibre bundles at the group level in both hemispheres by applying unsupervised clustering in the connectivity space. We propose a quantitative investigation of their position and number of streamlines as a function of hemisphere, sex and functional scores such as handedness and manual dexterity. Main findings of this study are twofold: a description of U-shape short-range connectivity along the central sulcus at group level and the evidence of a significant relationship between the position of three hand related U-shape fibre bundles and the handedness score of subjects.

•Pli-de-passages are important cortical features to understand sulcal variability.•It has been shown that they have a link with superficial white matter connectivity.•Their highly variable depth within sulci makes their detection difficult.•A characterization based on the geometry of the surrounding sulcal walls has been proposed in a previous publication.•Based on this characterization, we propose a machine learning framework to automatically detect their presence and localization within the superior temporal sulcus.•We demonstrate the accuracy of this framework and validate it on an independent dataset. The surface of the cerebral cortex is very convoluted, with a large number of folds, the cortical sulci. These folds are extremely variable from one individual to another, and this large variability is a problem for many applications in neuroscience and brain imaging. In particular, sulcal geometry (shape) and sulcal topology (branches, number of pieces) are very variable. “Plis de passages” (PPs) or “annectant gyri” can explain part of the topological variability, namely why sulci have a variable number of pieces across subjects. The concept of PPs was first introduced by Gratiolet (1854) to describe transverse gyri that interconnect both sides of a sulcus, that are frequently buried in the depth of sulci, and that are sometimes apparent on the cortical surface, hence seemingly interrupting the course of sulci and separating them in several pieces. Nevertheless, the difficulty of identifying PPs and the lack of systematic methods to automatically detect them has limited their use. However, based on a recent characterization of PPs in the superior temporal sulcus, we present here a method to automatically detect PPs in the superior temporal sulcus. Local morphology within the sulcus is characterized using cortical surface profiling, and the three-dimensional PP recognition problem is performed as a two-dimensional image classification problem with class-imbalance. This is solved by using an ensemble support vector machine model (EnsSVM) with a rebalancing strategy. Cross validation and quantitative experimental results on an external dataset show the effectiveness and robustness of our approach.

•Frontal voice areas (FVAs) are activated during voice perception in humans.•High inter-subject variability in the functional and anatomical location of the FVAs.•FVAs are significantly associated with individual sulcal anatomy.•Sulcal anatomy better predicts FVA location than group-average MNI coordinates. Group level analyses of functional regions involved in voice perception show evidence of 3 sets of bilateral voice-sensitive activations in the human prefrontal cortex, named the anterior, middle and posterior Frontal Voice Areas (FVAs). However, the relationship with the underlying sulcal anatomy, highly variable in this region, is still unknown. We examined the inter-individual variability of the FVAs in conjunction with the sulcal anatomy. To do so, anatomical and functional MRI scans from 74 subjects were analyzed to generate individual contrast maps of the FVAs and relate them to each subject's manually labeled prefrontal sulci. We report two major results. First, the frontal activations for the voice are significantly associated with the sulcal anatomy. Second, this correspondence with the sulcal anatomy at the individual level is a better predictor than coordinates in the MNI space. These findings offer new perspectives for the understanding of anatomical-functional correspondences in this complex cortical region. They also shed light on the importance of considering individual-specific variations in subject's anatomy.

Manual gestures and speech recruit a common neural network, involving Broca’s area in the left hemisphere. Such speech-gesture integration gave rise to theories on the critical role of manual gesturing in the origin of language. Within this evolutionary framework, research on gestural communication in our closer primate relatives has received renewed attention for investigating its potential language-like features. Here, using in vivo anatomical MRI in 50 baboons, we found that communicative gesturing is related to Broca homologue’s marker in monkeys, namely the ventral portion of the Inferior Arcuate sulcus ( IA sulcus ). In fact, both direction and degree of gestural communication’s handedness – but not handedness for object manipulation are associated and correlated with contralateral depth asymmetry at this exact IA sulcus portion. In other words, baboons that prefer to communicate with their right hand have a deeper left-than-right IA sulcus , than those preferring to communicate with their left hand and vice versa. Interestingly, in contrast to handedness for object manipulation, gestural communication’s lateralisation is not associated to the Central sulcus depth asymmetry, suggesting a double dissociation of handedness’ types between manipulative action and gestural communication. It is thus not excluded that this specific gestural lateralisation signature within the baboons’ frontal cortex might reflect a phylogenetical continuity with language-related Broca lateralisation in humans.

Diffusion MR images are prone to severe geometric distortions induced by head movement, eddy-current and inhomogeneity of magnetic susceptibility. Various correction methods have been proposed that depend on the choice of the acquisition settings and potentially provide highly different data quality. However, the impact of this choice has not been evaluated in terms of the ratio between scan time and preprocessed data quality. This study aims at investigating the impact of six well-known preprocessing methods, each associated to specific acquisition settings, on the outcome of diffusion analyses. For this purpose, we developed a comprehensive toolbox called which automatically guides the user to the best preprocessing pipeline according to the input data. Using MR images of 20 subjects from the HCP dataset, we compared the six pre-processing pipelines regarding the following criteria: the ability to recover brain's true geometry, the tensor model estimation and derived indices in the white matter, and finally the spatial dispersion of six well known connectivity pathways. As expected the pipeline associated to the longer acquisition fully repeated with reversed phase-encoding (RPE) yielded the higher data quality and was used as a reference to evaluate the other pipelines. In this way, we highlighted several significant aspects of other pre-processing pipelines. Our results first established that eddy-current correction improves the tensor-fitting performance with a localized impact especially in the corpus callosum. Concerning susceptibility distortions, we showed that the use of a field map is not sufficient and involves additional smoothing, yielding to an artificial decrease of tensor-fitting error. Of most importance, our findings demonstrate that, for an equivalent scan time, the acquisition of a b0 volume with RPE ensures a better brain's geometry reconstruction and local improvement of tensor quality, without any smoothing of the image. This was found to be the best scan time/data quality compromise. To conclude, this study highlights and attempts to quantify the strong dependence of diffusion metrics on acquisition settings and preprocessing methods.

The planum temporale ( PT ), a key language area, is specialized in the left hemisphere in prelinguistic infants and considered as a marker of the pre-wired language-ready brain. However, studies have reported a similar structural PT left-asymmetry not only in various adult non-human primates, but also in newborn baboons. Its shared functional links with language are not fully understood. Here we demonstrate using previously obtained MRI data that early detection of PT left-asymmetry among 27 newborn baboons ( Papio anubis , age range of 4 days to 2 months) predicts the future development of right-hand preference for communicative gestures but not for non-communicative actions. Specifically, only newborns with a larger left-than-right PT were more likely to develop a right-handed communication once juvenile, a contralateral brain-gesture link which is maintained in a group of 70 mature baboons. This finding suggests that early PT asymmetry may be a common inherited prewiring of the primate brain for the ontogeny of ancient lateralised properties shared between monkey gesture and human language. The planum temporale is a key structure in the human language network. Here the authors show that planum temporale asymmetry at birth in baboons predicts the development of communicative right-hand use, which suggests some common features in the wiring of communicative properties between species.

Significance In the human brain, from early in development through to adulthood, the superior temporal sulcus is deeper in the right than the left cerebral hemisphere in the area ventral of Heschl’s gyrus. Irrespective of gender, handedness, and language lateralization, and present in several pathologies, this asymmetry is widely shared among the human population. Its appearance early in life suggests strong genetic control over this part of the brain. In contrast, the asymmetry is barely visible in chimpanzees. Thus this asymmetry probably is a key locus to look for variations in gene expression among the primate lineage that have favored the evolution of crucial cognitive abilities sustained by this sulcus in our species, namely communication and social cognition. Identifying potentially unique features of the human cerebral cortex is a first step to understanding how evolution has shaped the brain in our species. By analyzing MR images obtained from 177 humans and 73 chimpanzees, we observed a human-specific asymmetry in the superior temporal sulcus at the heart of the communication regions and which we have named the “superior temporal asymmetrical pit” (STAP). This 45-mm-long segment ventral to Heschl’s gyrus is deeper in the right hemisphere than in the left in 95% of typical human subjects, from infanthood till adulthood, and is present, irrespective of handedness, language lateralization, and sex although it is greater in males than in females. The STAP also is seen in several groups of atypical subjects including persons with situs inversus, autistic spectrum disorder, Turner syndrome, and corpus callosum agenesis. It is explained in part by the larger number of sulcal interruptions in the left than in the right hemisphere. Its early presence in the infants of this study as well as in fetuses and premature infants suggests a strong genetic influence. Because this asymmetry is barely visible in chimpanzees, we recommend the STAP region during midgestation as an important phenotype to investigate asymmetrical variations of gene expression among the primate lineage. This genetic target may provide important insights regarding the evolution of the crucial cognitive abilities sustained by this sulcus in our species, namely communication and social cognition.

The baboon (Papio) brain is a remarkable model for investigating the brain. The current work aimed at creating a population-average baboon (Papio anubis) brain template and its left/right hemisphere symmetric version from a large sample of T1-weighted magnetic resonance images collected from 89 individuals. Averaging the prior probability maps output during the segmentation of each individual also produced the first baboon brain tissue probability maps for gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid. The templates and the tissue probability maps were created using state-of-the-art, freely available software tools and are being made freely and publicly available: http://www.nitrc.org/projects/haiko89/ or http://lpc.univ-amu.fr/spip.php?article589. It is hoped that these images will aid neuroimaging research of the baboon by, for example, providing a modern, high quality normalization target and accompanying standardized coordinate system as well as probabilistic priors that can be used during tissue segmentation. •Unbiased population-average baboon brain MRI templates are provided.•Tissue probability maps in template space are also provided.•Images are useful for normalization and segmentation of baboon neuroimaging data.•Provides a Talairach-like standardized anatomical coordinate space for the baboon

The human brain grows rapidly in early childhood, reaching 95% of its final volume by age 6. Understanding brain growth in childhood is important both to answer neuroscience questions about anatomical changes in development, and as a comparison metric for neurological disorders. Metrics for neuroanatomical development including cortical measures pertaining to the sulci can be instrumental in early diagnosis, monitoring, and intervention for neurological diseases. In this paper, we examine the development of the central sulcus in children aged 12–60 months from structural magnetic resonance images. The central sulcus is one of the earliest sulci to develop at the fetal stage and is implicated in diseases such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and Williams syndrome. We investigate the relationship between the changes in the depth of the central sulcus with respect to age. In our results, we observed a pattern of depth present early on, that had been previously observed in adults. Results also reveal the presence of a rightward depth asymmetry at 12 months of age at a location related to orofacial movements. That asymmetry disappears gradually, mostly between 12 and 24 months, and we suggest that it is related to the development of language skills.

Brain mapping studies often need to identify brain structures or functional circuits into a set of individual brain. To this end, multiple atlases have been published to represent such structures, based on different modalities, subject sets, and techniques. The mainstream approach to exploit these atlases consists in spatially deforming each individual data onto a given atlas using dense deformation fields, which supposes the existence of a continuous mapping between atlases and individuals. However this continuity is not always verified, and this “iconic” approach has limits. We present in this paper an alternative, complementary, “structural” approach, which consists in extracting structures from the individual data, and comparing them without deformation. A “structural atlas” is thus a collection of annotated individual data with a common structure nomenclature. It may be used to characterize structure shape variability across individuals or species, or to train machine learning systems. This paper exhibits Anatomist, a powerful structural 3D visualization software dedicated to building, exploring, and editing structural atlases involving a large number of subjects. It has been developed primarily to decipher the cortical folding variability: cortical sulci vary enormously in both size and shape, some may be missing, or have various topologies, which makes iconic approaches inefficient to study them. We therefore had to build structural atlases for cortical sulci, and use them to train sulci identification algorithms. Anatomist can display multiple subjects data in multiple views, supports all kinds of neuroimaging data including compound structural object graphs, handles arbitrary coordinate transformation chains between data, and has multiple display features. It is designed as a programming library in both C++ and Python languages, and may be extended or used to build dedicated custom applications. Its generic design makes all the display and structural aspects used to explore the variability of the cortical folding pattern work in other applications, for instance to browse axonal fiber bundles, deep nuclei, functional activations, or other kinds of cortical parcellations. Multimodal, multi-individual, or inter-species display is supported, and adaptations to large scale screen walls have been developed. These very original features makes it a unique viewer for structural atlas browsing.