VISUAL CORTEX & RECONSTRUCTIONS & REPRESENTATIONS OF CEREBRAL CORTEX

本子项目是利用由NIH/NCRR资助的中心赠款提供的资源的众多研究子项目之一。子项目和研究者（PI）可能已经从另一个NIH来源获得了主要资金，因此可以在其他CRISP条目中表示。列出的机构是中心的，不一定是研究者的机构。神经科学家已经获得了大量关于人类和非人类灵长类动物，特别是猕猴大脑皮层组织和功能的实验数据。为了应对这种信息洪流，需要新的工具和策略，以便充分分析和交流这些发现。我们与TRD4合作的脑映射研究的目标是开发改进的方法来可视化，分析和交流关于大脑皮层的信息，并将这些方法应用于人类和非人类灵长类动物的各种实验数据集。TRD4的中心焦点涉及显式表面重建的发展，以表示皮质片的形状。对皮层表面重建的需求源于大脑皮层复杂的卷积模式，特别是在人类中，以及褶皱模式的高度个体差异。长期以来，皮层卷积及其可变性一直是神经科学家既沮丧又着迷的问题。令人沮丧的是，卷积使得可视化重要的空间关系和精确而自信地指定皮质表面上的位置变得困难。人们之所以着迷，是因为好奇在开发过程中这些卷积是如何产生的，以及它们在功能上意味着什么。我们项目的主要目标是在皮质膜上生成眼底曲线，皮质表面最深曲率的解剖学特征（TRD4-Aim 3）。这些为新的映射算法（TRD4-Aims 2,5）的发展提供了里程碑，使具有不同诊断类别的个体之间或群体之间的重要功能差异与皮层结构和卷积模式的差异相关。进展：已实现并调试了地标的球面微分同构映射。来自范·埃森博士实验室的几个大脑现在已经被分析，产生了与范·埃森博士定义的泥质边界相匹配的微分态。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Neuroscientists have obtained vast amounts of experimental data about the organization and function of the cerebral cortex in humans and in non-human primates, especially the macaque monkey. To cope with this flood of information, new tools and strategies are necessary in order to adequately analyze and communicate these findings. The objective of our brain-mapping research in collaboration with TRD4 is to develop improved methods for visualizing, analyzing, and communicating information about the cerebral cortex, and to apply these methods to a variety of experimental data sets in humans and nonhuman primates. A central focus of TRD4 involves the development of explicit surface reconstructions to represent the shape of the cortical sheet. The need for cortical surface reconstructions arises from the complex pattern of convolutions of the cerebral cortex, particularly in humans, and from the high degree of individual variability in the pattern of folds. Cortical con volutions and their variability have long been matters of both frustration and fascination to neuroscientists. The frustration arises because the convolutions make it difficult to visualize important spatial relationships and to specify locations on the cortical surface with precision and confidence. The fascination arises because of curiosity about how the convolutions arise during development and what they signify functionally. The major goals of our projects are generating fundus curves on cortical membranes, the anatomical features of deepest curvature of cortical surfaces (TRD4-Aim 3). These provide the landmarks for the development of the new mapping algorithms (TRD4-Aims 2, 5) enabling important functional differences between individuals or across groups with different diagnostic categories to be correlated with differences in cortical structure and the pattern of convolutions. Progress: Spherical diffomeorphic mapping for landmarks have been implemented and debugged. Several brains from Dr. Van Essen's laboratory have now been analyzed, generating the diffeomorphisms corresponding to matching the sulcul boundaries as defined by Dr. Van Essen.