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•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.

Media multitasking, or the concurrent consumption of multiple media forms, is increasingly prevalent in today's society and has been associated with negative psychosocial and cognitive impacts. Individuals who engage in heavier media-multitasking are found to perform worse on cognitive control tasks and exhibit more socio-emotional difficulties. However, the neural processes associated with media multi-tasking remain unexplored. The present study investigated relationships between media multitasking activity and brain structure. Research has demonstrated that brain structure can be altered upon prolonged exposure to novel environments and experience. Thus, we expected differential engagements in media multitasking to correlate with brain structure variability. This was confirmed via Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) analyses: Individuals with higher Media Multitasking Index (MMI) scores had smaller gray matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Functional connectivity between this ACC region and the precuneus was negatively associated with MMI. Our findings suggest a possible structural correlate for the observed decreased cognitive control performance and socio-emotional regulation in heavy media-multitaskers. While the cross-sectional nature of our study does not allow us to specify the direction of causality, our results brought to light novel associations between individual media multitasking behaviors and ACC structure differences.

In the primate brain, a set of areas in the ventrolateral frontal (VLF) cortex and the dorsomedial frontal (DMF) cortex appear to control vocalizations. The basic role of this network in the human brain and how it may have evolved to enable complex speech remain unknown. In the present functional neuroimaging study of the human brain, a multidomain protocol was utilized to investigate the roles of the various areas that comprise the VLF–DMF network in learning rule-based cognitive selections between different types of motor actions: manual, orofacial, nonspeech vocal, and speech vocal actions. Ventrolateral area 44 (a key component of the Broca’s language production region in the human brain) is involved in the cognitive selection of orofacial, as well as, speech and nonspeech vocal responses; and the midcingulate cortex is involved in the analysis of speech and nonspeech vocal feedback driving adaptation of these responses. By contrast, the cognitive selection of speech vocal information requires this former network and the additional recruitment of area 45 and the presupplementary motor area. We propose that the basic function expressed by the VLF–DMF network is to exert cognitive control of orofacial and vocal acts and, in the language dominant hemisphere of the human brain, has been adapted to serve higher speech function. These results pave the way to understand the potential changes that could have occurred in this network across primate evolution to enable speech production.

Neuroimaging non-human primates (NHPs) is a growing, yet highly specialized field of neuroscience. Resources that were primarily developed for human neuroimaging often need to be significantly adapted for use with NHPs or other animals, which has led to an abundance of custom, in-house solutions. In recent years, the global NHP neuroimaging community has made significant efforts to transform the field towards more open and collaborative practices. Here we present the PRIMatE Resource Exchange (PRIME-RE), a new collaborative online platform for NHP neuroimaging. PRIME-RE is a dynamic community-driven hub for the exchange of practical knowledge, specialized analytical tools, and open data repositories, specifically related to NHP neuroimaging. PRIME-RE caters to both researchers and developers who are either new to the field, looking to stay abreast of the latest developments, or seeking to collaboratively advance the field .

Carnivorans are an important study object for comparative neuroscience, as they exhibit a wide range of behaviours, ecological adaptations, and social structures. Previous studies have mainly examined relative brain size, but a comprehensive understanding of brain diversity requires the investigation of other aspects of their neuroanatomy. Here, we obtained primarily post-mortem brain scans from 26 species of the order Carnivora, spanning across eight families with diverse representatives and including additional individuals for selected species, to create the largest carnivoran brain collection to date. We reconstructed their cortical surfaces and examined neocortical sulcal anatomy to establish a framework for systematic interspecies comparisons, revealing distinct regional variations in sulcal anatomy, potentially related to the species’ behaviour and ecology. Arctoidea species with pronounced forepaw dexterity exhibited complex sulcal configurations in the presumed somatosensory cortex but low sulcal complexity in the presumed visual and auditory occipitotemporal cortex. Canidae had the largest number of unique major sulci, including one in the occipital cortex and highly social canids featuring an additional frontal cortex sulcus. We also observed differentially complex occipitotemporal sulcal patterns in Felidae and Canidae, indicative of changes in auditory and visual areas that may be related to foraging strategies and social behaviour. In conclusion, this study presents an inventory of the sulcal anatomy of a number of rarely studied carnivoran brains including detailed digital atlases and establishes a framework and novel avenues for further investigations employing a variety of neuroimaging modalities to reveal more about carnivoran brain diversity.

Current theories fail to explain why the ability to control speech is unique to humans. We recently identified one unique feature in the human frontal cortex that may hold the key to this question: the Prefrontal Operculum (PFO). Here we aim to identify 1) its anatomo-functional organization to elucidate its potential function and 2) whether it has a homolog in the macaque brain. Functional connectivity (FC) results in humans, revealed that PFO is subdivided in two regions (aPFO and pPFO), displaying strong interactions but distinct whole brain FC profiles with respectively the language and the cognitive control networks, and thus suggesting an important role of PFO in the cognitive control of speech. Connectivity fingerprint analyses in macaques revealed similarities with pPFO, but we found no macaque homolog of human aPFO. Altogether, this study points toward the emergence of aPFO as an evolutionary advantage in hominids for modern speech abilities. Human and macaque frontal operculum connectivity patterns point to a uniquely human subdivision in the prefrontal cortex that may serve as a control hub for some speech functions.

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.

The inferior frontal sulcus (ifs) is a prominent sulcus on the lateral frontal cortex, separating the middle frontal gyrus from the inferior frontal gyrus. The morphology of the ifs can be difficult to distinguish from adjacent sulci, which are often misidentified as continuations of the ifs. The morphological variability of the ifs and its relationship to surrounding sulci were examined in 40 healthy human subjects (i.e., 80 hemispheres). The sulci were identified and labeled on the native cortical surface meshes of individual subjects, permitting proper intra‐sulcal assessment. Two main morphological patterns of the ifs were identified across hemispheres: in Type I, the ifs was a single continuous sulcus, and in Type II, the ifs was discontinuous and appeared in two segments. The morphology of the ifs could be further subdivided into nine subtypes based on the presence of anterior and posterior sulcal extensions. The ifs was often observed to connect, either superficially or completely, with surrounding sulci, and seldom appeared as an independent sulcus. The spatial variability of the ifs and its various morphological configurations were quantified in the form of surface spatial probability maps which are made publicly available in the standard fsaverage space. These maps demonstrated that the ifs generally occupied a consistent position across hemispheres and across individuals. The normalized mean sulcal depths associated with the main morphological types were also computed. The present study provides the first detailed description of the ifs as a sulcal complex composed of segments and extensions that can be clearly differentiated from adjacent sulci. These descriptions, together with the spatial probability maps, are critical for the accurate identification of the ifs in anatomical and functional neuroimaging studies investigating the structural characteristics and functional organization of this region in the human brain. The inferior frontal sulcus (ifs) is a sulcal complex composed of segments and extensions that can be clearly differentiated from the surrounding prefrontal sulci. The morphological patterns of the ifs were categorized into two main types and the spatial variability was quantified in the form of spatial probability maps. The definitions provided are critical for the accurate identification of the ifs in anatomical and functional neuroimaging studies.

Carnivorans are an important study object for comparative neuroscience, as they exhibit a wide range of behaviours, ecological adaptations, and social structures. Previous studies have mainly examined relative brain size, but a comprehensive understanding of brain diversity requires the investigation of other aspects of their neuroanatomy. Here, we obtained primarily post-mortem brain scans from 26 species of the order Carnivora, spanning across eight families with diverse representatives and including additional individuals for selected species, to create the largest carnivoran brain collection to date. We reconstructed their cortical surfaces and examined neocortical sulcal anatomy to establish a framework for systematic interspecies comparisons, revealing distinct regional variations in sulcal anatomy, potentially related to the species’ behaviour and ecology. Arctoidea species with pronounced forepaw dexterity exhibited complex sulcal configurations in the presumed somatosensory cortex but low sulcal complexity in the presumed visual and auditory occipitotemporal cortex. Canidae had the largest number of unique major sulci, including one in the occipital cortex and highly social canids featuring an additional frontal cortex sulcus. We also observed differentially complex occipitotemporal sulcal patterns in Felidae and Canidae, indicative of changes in auditory and visual areas that may be related to foraging strategies and social behaviour. In conclusion, this study presents an inventory of the sulcal anatomy of a number of rarely studied carnivoran brains including detailed digital atlases and establishes a framework and novel avenues for further investigations employing a variety of neuroimaging modalities to reveal more about carnivoran brain diversity.

Current theories fail to explain why the ability to control speech is unique to humans. We recently identified one unique feature in the human frontal cortex that may hold the key to this question: the Prefrontal Operculum (PFO). Here we aim to identify 1) its anatomo-functional organization to elucidate its potential function and 2) whether it has a homolog in the macaque brain. Functional connectivity (FC) results in humans, revealed that PFO is subdivided in two regions (aPFO and pPFO), displaying strong interactions but distinct whole brain FC profiles with respectively the language and the cognitive control networks, and thus suggesting an important role of PFO in the cognitive control of speech. Connectivity fingerprint analyses in macaques revealed similarities with pPFO, but we found no macaque homolog of human aPFO. Altogether, this study points toward the emergence of aPFO as an evolutionary advantage in hominids for modern speech abilities.