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Automated segmentation of cortical layers in BigBrain reveals divergent cortical and laminar thickness gradients in sensory and motor cortices

View ORCID ProfileKonrad Wagstyl, Stéphanie Larocque, Guillem Cucurull, Claude Lepage, Joseph Paul Cohen, Sebastian Bludau, Nicola Palomero-Gallagher, Thomas Funck, Hannah Spitzer, Timo Dicksheid, Paul C Fletcher, Adriana Romero, Karl Zilles, Katrin Amunts, Yoshua Bengio, Alan C. Evans
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/580597
Konrad Wagstyl
1McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Canada
2Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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  • ORCID record for Konrad Wagstyl
  • For correspondence: kw350@cam.ac.uk
Stéphanie Larocque
3MILA, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
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Guillem Cucurull
3MILA, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
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Claude Lepage
1McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Canada
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Joseph Paul Cohen
3MILA, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
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Sebastian Bludau
4Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany
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Nicola Palomero-Gallagher
4Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany
5Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen
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Thomas Funck
1McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Canada
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Hannah Spitzer
4Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany
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Timo Dicksheid
4Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany
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Paul C Fletcher
2Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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Adriana Romero
3MILA, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
6Department of Computer Science, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
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Karl Zilles
4Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany
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Katrin Amunts
4Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, 52425 Jülich Jülich Forschungszentrum, Germany
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Yoshua Bengio
3MILA, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
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Alan C. Evans
1McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Montreal Neurological Institute, Montreal, Canada
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Abstract

Large-scale in vivo neuroimaging datasets offer new possibilities for reliable, well-powered measures of interregional structural differences and biomarkers of pathological changes in a wide variety of neurological and psychiatric diseases. However, so far studies have been structurally and functionally imprecise, being unable to relate pathological changes to specific cortical layers or neurobiological processes. We developed artificial neural networks to segment cortical and laminar surfaces in the BigBrain, a 3D histological model of the human brain. We sought to test whether previously-reported thickness gradients, as measured by MRI, in sensory and motor processing cortices, were present in a histological atlas of cortical thickness, and which cortical layers were contributing to these gradients. Identifying common gradients of cortical organisation enables us to meaningfully relate microstructural, macrostructural and functional cortical parameters.

Analysis of thickness gradients across sensory cortices, using our fully segmented six-layered model, was consistent with MRI findings, showing increasing thickness moving up the processing hierarchy. In contrast, fronto-motor cortices showed the opposite pattern with changes in thickness of layers III, V and VI being the primary drivers of these gradients. As well as identifying key differences between sensory and motor gradients, our findings show how the use of this laminar atlas offers insights that will be key to linking single-neuron morphological changes, mesoscale cortical layers and macroscale cortical thickness.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted April 14, 2019.
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Automated segmentation of cortical layers in BigBrain reveals divergent cortical and laminar thickness gradients in sensory and motor cortices
Konrad Wagstyl, Stéphanie Larocque, Guillem Cucurull, Claude Lepage, Joseph Paul Cohen, Sebastian Bludau, Nicola Palomero-Gallagher, Thomas Funck, Hannah Spitzer, Timo Dicksheid, Paul C Fletcher, Adriana Romero, Karl Zilles, Katrin Amunts, Yoshua Bengio, Alan C. Evans
bioRxiv 580597; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/580597
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Automated segmentation of cortical layers in BigBrain reveals divergent cortical and laminar thickness gradients in sensory and motor cortices
Konrad Wagstyl, Stéphanie Larocque, Guillem Cucurull, Claude Lepage, Joseph Paul Cohen, Sebastian Bludau, Nicola Palomero-Gallagher, Thomas Funck, Hannah Spitzer, Timo Dicksheid, Paul C Fletcher, Adriana Romero, Karl Zilles, Katrin Amunts, Yoshua Bengio, Alan C. Evans
bioRxiv 580597; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/580597

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