Occipital Intralobar fasciculi: a description, through tractography, of three forgotten tracts

Abstract

Diffusion MRI paired with tractography has facilitated a non-invasive exploration of many association, projection, and commissural fiber tracts. However, there is still a scarcity of research studies related to intralobar association fibers. The Dejerines’ (two of the most notable neurologists of 19th century France) gave an in-depth description of the intralobar fibers of the occipital lobe. Unfortunately, their exquisite work has since been sparsely cited in the modern literature. This work gives a modern description of many of the occipital intralobar lobe fibers described by the Dejerines. We perform a virtual dissection and reconstruct the tracts using diffusion MRI tractography. The dissection is guided by the Dejerines’ treatise, Anatomie des Centres Nerveux. As an accompaniment to this article, we provided a French-to-English translation of the treatise portion concerning five intra-occipital tracts, namely: the stratum calcarinum, the stratum proprium cunei, the vertical occipital fasciculus of Wernicke, the transverse fasciculus of the cuneus and the transverse fasciculus of the lingual lobule of Vialet. It was possible to reconstruct all but one of these tracts. For completeness, the recently described sledge runner fasciculus, although not one of the Dejerines’ tracts, was identified and successfully reconstructed.

White matter variability, cognition, and disorders: a systematic review

“…The anatomy of the VOF has been verified using tractography (Yeatman et al 2014 ; Keser et al 2016 ; Briggs et al 2018 ; Schurr et al 2019 ; Panesar et al 2019 ), post-mortem dissections (Vergani et al 2014 ; Gungor et al 2017 ; Palejwala et al 2020 ), and comparative anatomy (Takemura et al 2017 ). These descriptions were scrutinized against historical post-mortem descriptions from Wernicke (Yeatman et al 2014 ), Sachs (Vergani et al 2014 ) and the Dejerine's (Bugain et al 2021 ). Anatomically, the vertical occipital fiber system and the posterior arcuate segment are distinct bundles in terms of their trajectories and cortical terminations.…”

Stroke disconnectome decodes reading networks

“…The anatomy of the VOF has been verified using tractography (Briggs et al 2018 ; Keser et al 2016 ; Panesar et al 2019 ; Schurr et al 2019 ; Yeatman et al 2014 ), post-mortem dissections (Güngör et al 2017 ; Palejwala et al 2020 ; Vergani et al 2014 ), and comparative anatomy (Takemura et al 2017 ). These descriptions were scrutinised against historical post-mortem descriptions from Wernicke (Yeatman et al, 2014 ), Sachs (Forkel et al 2015 ; Vergani et al 2014 ) and the Dejerines (Bugain et al 2021 ). Anatomically, the vertical occipital fibre system is distinct from the parietal–temporal branch of the arcuate fasciculus (e.g.…”

Stroke disconnectome decodes reading networks

“…The anatomy of the VOF has been verified using tractography (Briggs et al, 2018; Keser et al, 2016; Panesar et al, 2019; Schurr et al, 2019; Yeatman et al, 2014), post-mortem dissections (Güngör et al, 2017; Palejwala et al, 2020; Vergani et al, 2014), and comparative anatomy (Takemura et al, 2017). These descriptions were scrutinised against historical post-mortem descriptions from Wernicke (Yeatman et al, 2014), Sachs (Forkel et al, 2015; Vergani et al, 2014) and the Dejerine’s (Bugain et al, 2021). Anatomically, the vertical occipital fibre system is distinct from the parietal-temporal branch of the arcuate fasciculus (e.g.…”