Detailed mapping of the complex fiber structure and white matter pathways of the chimpanzee brain.
Cornelius EichnerMichael PaquetteChrista Müller-AxtChristian BockEike BudingerTobias GräßleCarsten JägerEvgeniya KirilinaIlona Lippnull nullMarkus MorawskiHenriette RuschPatricia WenkNikolaus WeiskopfRoman M WittigCatherine CrockfordAngela D FriedericiAlfred AnwanderPublished in: Nature methods (2024)
Long-standing questions about human brain evolution may only be resolved through comparisons with close living evolutionary relatives, such as chimpanzees. This applies in particular to structural white matter (WM) connectivity, which continuously expanded throughout evolution. However, due to legal restrictions on chimpanzee research, neuroscience research currently relies largely on data with limited detail or on comparisons with evolutionarily distant monkeys. Here, we present a detailed magnetic resonance imaging resource to study structural WM connectivity in the chimpanzee. This open-access resource contains (1) WM reconstructions of a postmortem chimpanzee brain, using the highest-quality diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data yet acquired from great apes; (2) an optimized and validated method for high-quality fiber orientation reconstructions; and (3) major fiber tract segmentations for cross-species morphological comparisons. This dataset enabled us to identify phylogenetically relevant details of the chimpanzee connectome, and we anticipate that it will substantially contribute to understanding human brain evolution.
Keyphrases
- white matter
- magnetic resonance imaging
- multiple sclerosis
- resting state
- functional connectivity
- electronic health record
- computed tomography
- big data
- lymph node
- minimally invasive
- high resolution
- image quality
- magnetic resonance
- genome wide
- gene expression
- machine learning
- mass spectrometry
- dna methylation
- high density
- brain injury
- artificial intelligence
- cerebral ischemia
- diffusion weighted imaging
- dual energy