Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Quantifying indices of short- and long-range white matter connectivity at each cortical vertex

Published inPLOS ONE, vol. 12, no. 11, e0187493
Publication date2017
Abstract

Several neurodevelopmental diseases are characterized by impairments in cortical morphology along with altered white matter connectivity. However, the relationship between these two measures is not yet clear. In this study, we propose a novel methodology to compute and display metrics of white matter connectivity at each cortical point. After co-registering the extremities of the tractography streamlines with the cortical surface, we computed two measures of connectivity at each cortical vertex: the mean tracts' length, and the proportion of short- and long-range connections. The proposed measures were tested in a clinical sample of 62 patients with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) and 57 typically developing individuals. Using these novel measures, we achieved a fine-grained visualization of the white matter connectivity patterns at each vertex of the cortical surface. We observed an intriguing pattern of both increased and decreased short- and long-range connectivity in 22q11DS, that provides novel information about the nature and topology of white matter alterations in the syndrome. We argue that the method presented in this study opens avenues for additional analyses of the relationship between cortical properties and patterns of underlying structural connectivity, which will help clarifying the intrinsic mechanisms that lead to altered brain structure in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Keywords
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Brain Mapping/methods
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Cerebral Cortex/diagnostic imaging/physiopathology
  • Child
  • DiGeorge Syndrome/diagnostic imaging/physiopathology
  • Diffusion Tensor Imaging/methods
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • White Matter/diagnostic imaging/physiopathology
  • Young Adult
Citation (ISO format)
PADULA, Maria et al. Quantifying indices of short- and long-range white matter connectivity at each cortical vertex. In: PLOS ONE, 2017, vol. 12, n° 11, p. e0187493. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187493
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Article (Published version)
Identifiers
ISSN of the journal1932-6203
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175downloads

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