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. 2019 Aug 24:708:134342.
doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2019.134342. Epub 2019 Jun 19.

Developmental trajectories of the human embryologic brain regions

Kumiko Oishi  1 , Jill Chotiyanonta  2 , Dan Wu  2 , Michael I Miller  3 , Susumu Mori  4 , Kenichi Oishi  5 ; Pediatric Imaging Neurocognition and Genetics Study
Affiliations

Developmental trajectories of the human embryologic brain regions

Kumiko Oishi et al. Neurosci Lett. .

Abstract

Vertebrate brains commonly consist of five basic embryologic anatomical regions: telencephalon; diencephalon; mesencephalon; metencephalon; and myelencephalon. The proportions of these regions vary widely across species and developmental stages. Investigation of their growth trajectories, therefore, has the potential to provide an understanding of the substrates of inter-species variation in neuroanatomy and function. To investigate the volumetric growth trajectories, structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans obtained from 618 healthy children (334 boys, 284 girls; ages 3-17 years old) were parcellated into five regions for the volume quantification. The sex- and region-specific growth trajectories were identified, and the most active growth was seen in the mesencephalon for both boys and girls. Whether similar regional growth patterns are seen in other species, or whether such patterns are related to evolution, are important questions that must be elucidated in the future.

Keywords: Atlas; Child; Diencephalon; Magnetic resonance imaging; Mesencephalon; Metencephalon; Myelencephalon; Telencephalon.

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Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
A representative image with the color-coded regional boundaries. Web-based image processing software, MRICloud (www.MRICloud.org), was used to parcellate each T1-weighted image into five anatomical units that cover the whole brain: telencephalon (cyan); diencephalon (light green); mesencephalon (pink); metencephalon (yellow); and myelencephalon (orange). This is a fully automated method based on a diffeomorphic multi-atlas label fusion algorithm [9, 11, 25, 39, 44], which is among the most accurate methods for three-dimensional image parcellation.
Figure 2:
Figure 2:
Scattergram of raw volumes plotted against age, obtained from the five basic embryologic regions. The two lines are the fitted curves chosen by the Akaike’s Informational Criterion. Solid lines represent boys and dotted lines represent girls.
Figure 3:
Figure 3:
Brain growth ratio of the five basic embryologic regions. The volume ratios (raw volume / the average of all three-year-olds) were calculated separately for boys and girls. Two fitted curves (solid line: boys, dotted lines: girls) were chosen by the Akaike’s Informational Criterion.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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