Mapping the primate thalamus: historical perspective and modern approaches for defining nuclei
AbstractThe primate thalamus has been subdivided into multiple nuclei and nuclear groups based on cytoarchitectonic, myeloarchitectonic, connectional, histochemical, and genoarchitectonic differences. Regarding parcellation and terminology, two main schools prevailed in the twentieth century: the German and the Anglo-American Schools, which proposed rather different schemes. The German parcellation and terminology has been mostly used for the human thalamus in neurosurgery atlases; the Anglo-American parcellation and terminology is the most used in experimental research on the primate thalamus. In this article, we review t...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 9, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Populational heterogeneity and partial migratory origin of the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus: genoarchitectonic analysis in the mouse
AbstractThe ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMH) is one of the most distinctive hypothalamic tuberal structures, subject of numerous classic and modern functional studies. Commonly, the adult VMH has been divided in several portions, attending to differences in cell aggregation, cell type, connectivity, and function. Consensus VMH partitions in the literature comprise the dorsomedial (VMHdm), and ventrolateral (VMHvl) subnuclei, which are separated by an intermediate or central (VMHc) population (topographic names based on the columnar axis). However, some recent transcriptome analyses have identified a higher number of...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 4, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Identifying the midline thalamus in humans in vivo
AbstractThe midline thalamus is critical for flexible cognition, memory, and stress regulation in humans and its dysfunction is associated with several neurological and psychiatric disorders, including Alzheimer ’s disease, schizophrenia, and depression. Despite the pervasive role of the midline thalamus in cognition and disease, there is a limited understanding of its function in humans, likely due to the absence of a rigorous noninvasive neuroimaging methodology to identify its location. Here, we introd uce a new method for identifying the midline thalamus in vivo using probabilistic tractography andk-means clustering ...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 4, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Laminar dynamics of deep projection neurons and mode of subplate formation are hallmarks of histogenetic subdivisions of the human cingulate cortex before onset of arealization
In conclusion, laminar DPN markers dynamics, together with the SVZ size and mode of SP formation indicate regional belt-like cingulate cortex differentiation before the corpus callosum expansion and several months before Brodmann type arealization. (Source: Anatomy and Embryology)
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 2, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Recollection and prior knowledge recruit the left angular gyrus during recognition
AbstractThe human angular gyrus (AG) is implicated in recollection, or the ability to retrieve detailed memory content from aspecific episode. A separate line of research examining the neural bases of moregeneral mnemonic representations, extracted over multiple episodes, also highlights the AG as a core region of interest. To reconcile these separate views of AG function, the present fMRI experiment used a Remember-Know paradigm with famous (prior knowledge) and non-famous (no prior knowledge) faces to test whether AG activity could be modulated by both task-specific recollection and general prior knowledge within the sam...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 1, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
The role of the angular gyrus in semantic cognition: a synthesis of five functional neuroimaging studies
AbstractSemantic knowledge is central to human cognition. The angular gyrus (AG) is widely considered a key brain region for semantic cognition. However, the role of the AG in semantic processing is controversial. Key controversies concern response polarity (activation vs. deactivation) and its relation to task difficulty, lateralization (left vs. right AG), and functional –anatomical subdivision (PGa vs. PGp subregions). Here, we combined the fMRI data of five studies on semantic processing (n = 172) and analyzed the response profiles from the same anatomical regions-of-interest for left and right PGa and PGp. We fo...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 1, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
The role of the angular gyrus in arithmetic processing: a literature review
AbstractSince the pioneering work of the early 20th century neuropsychologists, the angular gyrus (AG), particularly in the left hemisphere, has been associated with numerical and mathematical processing. The association between the AG and numerical and mathematical processing has been substantiated by neuroimaging research. In the present review article, we will examine what is currently known about the role of the AG in numerical and mathematical processing with a particular focus on arithmetic. Specifically, we will examine the role of the AG in the retrieval of arithmetic facts in both typically developing children and...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 1, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
The angular gyrus: a special issue on its complex anatomy and function
(Source: Anatomy and Embryology)
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 1, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Proper and common names in the semantic system
AbstractProper names are an important part of language and communication. They are thought to have a special status due to their neuropsychological and psycholinguistic profile. To what extent proper names rely on the same semantic system as common names is not clear. In an fMRI study, we presented the same group of participants with both proper and common names to compare the associated activations. Both person and place names, as well as personally familiar and famous names were used, and compared with words representing concrete and abstract concepts. A whole-brain analysis was followed by a detailed analysis of subdivi...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - January 1, 2023 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
How processing emotion affects language control in bilinguals
AbstractResearch has shown that several variables affect language control among bilingual speakers but the effect of affective processing remains unexplored. Chinese –English bilinguals participated in a novel prime-target language switching experiment in which they first judged the affective valence (i.e., positive or negative) of auditorily presented words and then named pictures with neutral emotional valence in either the same (non-switch trial) or differe nt language (switch trial). Brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The behavioral performance showed that the typical swi...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - December 31, 2022 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Applications of advanced diffusion MRI in early brain development: a comprehensive review
AbstractBrain development follows a protracted developmental timeline with foundational processes of neurodevelopment occurring from the third trimester of gestation into the first decade of life. Defining structural maturational patterns of early brain development is a critical step in detecting divergent developmental trajectories associated with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders that arise later in life. While considerable advancements have already been made in diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) for pediatric research over the past three decades, the field of neurodevelopment is still in its infancy ...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - December 31, 2022 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Is musical engagement enough to keep the brain young?
AbstractMusic-making and engagement in music-related activities have shown procognitive benefits for healthy and pathological populations, suggesting reductions in brain aging. A previous brain aging study, using Brain Age Gap Estimation (BrainAGE), showed that professional and amateur-musicians had younger appearing brains than non-musicians. Our study sought to replicate those findings and analyze if musical training or active musical engagement was necessary to produce an age-decelerating effect in a cohort of healthy individuals. We scanned 125 healthy controls and investigated if musician status, and if musical behavi...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - December 27, 2022 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Characterizing functional modules in the human thalamus: coactivation-based parcellation and systems-level functional decoding
AbstractThe human thalamus relays sensory signals to the cortex and facilitates brain-wide communication. The thalamus is also more directly involved in sensorimotor and various cognitive functions but a full characterization of its functional repertoire, particularly in regard to its internal anatomical structure, is still outstanding. As a putative hub in the human connectome, the thalamus might reveal its functional profile only in conjunction with interconnected brain areas. We therefore developed a novel systems-level Bayesian reverse inference decoding that complements the traditional neuroinformatics approach toward...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - December 22, 2022 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Neuronal nitric oxide synthase positive neurons in the human corpus callosum: a possible link with the callosal blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) effect
AbstractBrain functions have been investigated in the past decades via the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) effect using functional magnetic resonance imaging. One hypothesis explaining the BOLD effect involves the Nitric Oxide (NO) gaseous neurotransmitter, possibly released also by cells in the corpus callosum (CC). The eventual presence of NO releasing neurons and/or glial cells in the CC can be assessed by immunohistochemistry. Serial sections both from paraffin-embedded and frozen samples of CC obtained from adult human brains autopsy were studied with immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence analysis, using an ...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - December 3, 2022 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
Functional connectivity correlates of reduced goal-directed behaviors in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia
AbstractWe explored the resting state functional connectivity correlates of apathy assessed as a multidimensional construct, using behavioral metrics, in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). We recorded the behavior of 20 bvFTD patients and 16 healthy controls in a close-to-real-life situation including a free phase (FP —in which actions were self-initiated) and a guided phase (GP—in which initiation of actions was facilitated by external guidance). We investigated the activity time and walking episode features as quantifiers of apathy. We used the means ((FP + GP)/2) and the differences (FP-GP) calc...
Source: Anatomy and Embryology - November 12, 2022 Category: Anatomy Source Type: research
