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Recent studies in humans and nonhuman primates have shown that the functional organization of the human sensorimotor cortex changes following sensory stimulation or following the acquisition of motor skills. It is unknown whether functional plasticity in response to the acquisition of new motor skills and the continued performance of complicated bimanual movements for years is associated with structural changes in the organization of the motor cortex. Professional musicians, especially keyboard and string players, are a prototypical group for investigating these changes in the human brain. Using magnetic resonance images, we measured the length of the posterior wall of the precentral gyrus bordering the central sulcus (intrasulcal length of the precentral gyrus, ILPG) in horizontal sections through both hemispheres of right-handed keyboard players and of an age-and handedness-matched control group. Lacking a direct in vivo measurement of the primary motor cortex in humans, we assumed that the ILPG is a measure of the size of the primary motor cortex. Left-right asymmetry in the ILPG was analyzed and compared between both groups. Whereas controls exhibited a pronounced left-larger-than-right asymmetry , keyboard players had more symmetrical ILPG. The most pronounced differences in ILPG between keyboard players and controls were seen in the most dorsal part of the presumed cortical hand representation of both hemispheres. This was especially true in the nondominant right hemispheres. The size of the ILPG was negatively correlated with age of commencement of musical training in keyboard players, supporting our hypothesis that the human motor cortex can exhibit functionally induced and long-lasting structural adaptations.

We present the new computerized Human Brain Atlas (HBA) for anatomical and functional mapping studies of the human brain. The HBA is based on many high-resolution magnetic resonance images of normal subjects and provides continuous updating of the mean shape and position of anatomical structures of the human brain. The structures are transformable by linear and nonlinear global and local transformations applied anywhere in 3-D pictures to fit the anatomical structures of individual brains, which, by reformatting, are transformed into a high-resolution standard anatomical format. The power of the HBA to reduce anatomical variations was evaluated on a randomized selection of anatomical landmarks in brains of 27 young normal male volunteers who were different from those on whom the standard brain was selected. The HBA, even when based only on standard brain surface and central structures, reduced interindividual anatomical variance to the level of the variance in structure position between the right and left hemisphere in individual brains. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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An exact registration of magnetic resonance images (MRI) with histological sections is impeded by local deformations resulting from histological preparation procedures. Therefore, it is desirable to know the probability density function of spatial deformations in order to estimate optimal global least-square transformation parameters from suitable landmarks. For this reason, the statistics of deformations is investigated. It is shown analytically that the frequency of occurrence of the absolute geometrical differences (deformations) are Rayleigh-Bessel distributed for anisotropic histological preparation procedures and Rayleigh distributed in the case of isotropic procedures. The probabilistic analysis is given in conjunction with an iterative optimization technique in order to ensure that the probability density function is within a threshold required for the application to experimental data. The application of the analytical model is investigated with real data. It is shown with this data that the extent of deformations varies with the size of the histological section. An individual threshold can be selected on the basis of a Rayleigh-function restricting local corrections to small parts of the image. Thus, global misalignment in each section can be avoided, resulting in an improved 3-D reconstruction of the volume, i.e., the transitions from one section to the next are more continuous.