A new myeloarchitectonic map of the human neocortex based on data from the Vogt–Vogt school

Abstract

The human cerebral cortex contains numerous myelinated fibres, the arrangement and density of which is by no means homogeneous throughout the cortex. Local differences in the spatial organization of these fibres render it possible to recognize areas with a different myeloarchitecture. The neuroanatomical subdiscipline aimed at the identification and delineation of such areas is known as myeloarchitectonics. During the period extending from 1910 to 1970, Oscar and Cécile Vogt and their numerous collaborators (The Vogt-Vogt school) published a large number of myeloarchitectonic studies on the cortex of the various lobes of the human cerebrum. Recently, one of us (Nieuwenhuys in Brain Struct Funct 218: 303-352, 2013) extensively reviewed these studies. It was concluded that the data available are adequate and sufficient for the composition of a myeloarchitectonic map of the entire human neocortex. The present paper is devoted to the creation of this map. Because the data provided by the Vogt-Vogt school are derived from many different brains, a standard brain had to be introduced to which all data available could be transferred. As such, the colin27 structural scan, aligned to the MNI305 template was selected. The procedure employed in this transfer involved computer-aided transformations of the lobar maps available in the literature, to the corresponding regions of the standard brain, as well as local adjustments in the border zones of the various lobes. The resultant map includes 180 myeloarchitectonic areas, 64 frontal, 30 parietal, 6 insular, 17 occipital and 63 temporal. The designation of the various areas with simple Arabic numbers, introduced by Oscar Vogt for the frontal and parietal cortices, has been extended over the entire neocortex. It may be expected that combination of the myeloarchitectonic data of the Vogt-Vogt school, as expressed in our map, with the results of the detailed cytoarchitectonic and receptor architectonic studies of Karl Zilles and Katrin Amunts and their numerous associates, will yield a comprehensive 'supermap' of the structural organization of the human neocortex. For the time being, i. e., as long as this 'supermap' is not yet available, our map may provide a tentative frame of reference for (a) the morphological interpretation of the results of functional neuroimaging studies; (b) the selection of starting points (seed voxels, regions-of-interest) in diffusion tractography studies and

Studying cyto and myeloarchitecture of the human cortex at ultra-high field with quantitative imaging: R1, R2* and magnetic susceptibility

“…6) were highly dependendent on the boundary conditions, suggesting that either the quality of the susceptibility maps is not sufficient to obtain better parameterization of r My 1, , r Fe 1, , r * My 2, , r * Fe 2, , χ My , χ Fe (the problem is ill-conditioned if some other of these parameters are not fixed) or the model suggested is not valid across the cortex because the baseline susceptibility or relaxivity values might vary throughout the brain (which is something not tested exvivo). While the resulting iron and myelin profiles in different cortical areas could be explained by some known anatomical landmarks (Nieuwenhuys et al, 2014), the resulting cortical maps have features that contradict the expected myelin maps. The most striking observation being that it is the paramagnetic/iron map that retained most of the features observed in the R 1 maps.…”

“…4) persist after this averaging process. To better emphasize the differences between different brain regions a myelo-structure based atlas could have been more appropriate (Nieuwenhuys, 2013) as it is known that within one Brodmann region, several myelin based regions can exist (Nieuwenhuys et al, 2014), the use of Broadman areas as ROI will tend to average out such differences. Another segmentation approach would have been automatic segmentation of the subject specific clusters for different quantitative contrasts similar to the functional parcellation of the cortex (Honnorat et al, 2015).…”

The Human Connectome Project's neuroimaging approach

“…(ii) It should reflect complementary and converging evidence from multiple modalities across the whole cerebral neocortex for completeness and for higher confidence in boundaries. Most parcellation efforts to date have relied instead on information from a single modality, such as architecture 70,83 , retinotopy 16,29 , or resting-state fMRI 84–86 , and often do not cover the whole hemisphere. (iii) It should reflect existing terminology for areas previously reported in the neuroanatomical literature and a rational terminology for newly defined areas.…”

Reproducibility and Reliability of Quantitative and Weighted T1 and T2∗ Mapping for Myelin-Based Cortical Parcellation at 7 Tesla

“…The brain can be partitioned into distinct functional and anatomical areas based on functional specificity and histological markers, such as cyto-architecture, receptor-architecture and cortical myelin distribution (Brodmann, 1909; Zilles and Amunts, 2009; Nieuwenhuys et al, 2014). In particular, the distribution of cortical myelin (i.e., myeloarchitecture) is highly suitable for parcellating the brain (Brodmann, 1909; Vogt and Vogt, 1919; Nieuwenhuys et al, 2014).…”

“…In particular, the distribution of cortical myelin (i.e., myeloarchitecture) is highly suitable for parcellating the brain (Brodmann, 1909; Vogt and Vogt, 1919; Nieuwenhuys et al, 2014). A recent paper by Glasser and Van Essen (2011) suggested utilizing MR imaging to partition the cortex based on myeloarchitecture (Geyer et al, 2011; Glasser and Van Essen, 2011; Glasser et al, 2016).…”