Whole brain comparative anatomy using connectivity blueprints
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Abstract
Comparing the brains of related species faces the challenges of establishing homologies whilst accommodating evolutionary specializations. Here we propose a general framework for understanding similarities and differences between the brains of primates. The approach uses white matter blueprints of the whole cortex based on a set of white matter tracts that can be anatomically matched across species. The blueprints provide a common reference space that allows us to navigate between brains of different species, identify homologous cortical areas, or to transform whole cortical maps from one species to the other. Specializations are cast within this framework as deviations between the species' blueprints. We illustrate how this approach can be used to compare human and macaque brains.
Data availability
The human diffusion MRI data was obtained from the Human Connectome Project (www.humanconnectome.org.). Tractography protocols for building the blueprints, code, and results are available for download from Gitlab at https://git.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/rmars/comparing-connectivity-blueprints.git.
Article and author information
Author details
Stamatios N Sotiropoulos
Alexandre A Khrapitchev
Funding
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/N019814/1)
- Rogier B Mars
Medical Research Council (MR/L009013/1)
- Saad Jbabdi
Wellcome (203139/Z/16/Z)
- Rogier B Mars
- Jerome Sallet
- Saad Jbabdi
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (452-13-015)
- Rogier B Mars
Cancer Research UK (C5255/A15935)
- Alexandre A Khrapitchev
- Nicola Sibson
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2018, Mars et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Whole brain comparative anatomy using connectivity blueprints
eLife 7:e35237.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.35237
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