Interindividual variability of the central sulcus in high resolution brain MRI images
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Abstract
The cerebral cortex of the human brain is an undulating sheet of neurons characterized by invaginations called sulci separated by evaginations called gyri. Most of the sulci and gyri of the human brain are present in all individuals. However, there is considerable interindividual variability in the sulcal and gyral anatomy, with each individual having a unique pattern of these grooves. The most complete categorization of this variability was carried out by Ono and colleagues (1990) but was only performed on a limited sample of 25 cadaveric brains. Moreover, the sex, age, and comorbidity status of these brains were not reported. As a result, the categorization of sulcal variability in the human brain is limited and unlikely to be representative. To address this gap in knowledge, we evaluated anatomical patterns of the central and precentral sulci in 69 subjects using high resolution MRI scans from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). Subjects were healthy and well characterized, taken from both sexes and different races. With this larger and more representative population, we identified different patterns of variability, and found a novel structural variant. Overall, our work provides a more detailed, comprehensive, and representative evaluation of the anatomical variability of central and precentral sulci in the human brain. These findings are important for a more complete understanding of variability in the human cerebral cortex and are important for neuroimaging studies that require localization of structures based on sulcal patterns to interpret activation or connectional patterns, or for studies using neuroimaging to guide neurostimulation.
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2024