期刊名称:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN:0027-8424
电子版ISSN:1091-6490
出版年度:2018
卷号:115
期号:29
页码:E6910-E6919
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1807255115
语种:English
出版社:The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要:The endbrain (telencephalon) is at the rostral end of the central nervous system and is primarily responsible for supporting cognition and affect. Structurally, it consists of right and left cerebral hemispheres, each parceled into multiple cortical and nuclear gray matter regions. The global network organization of axonal macroconnections between the 244 regions forming the endbrain was analyzed with a multiresolution consensus clustering (MRCC) method that provides a hierarchical description of community clustering (modules or subsystems) within the network. Experimental evidence was collated from the neuroanatomical literature for the existence of 10,002 of a possible 59,292 connections within the network, and they cluster into four top-level subsystems and 60 bottom-level subsystems arranged in a 50-level hierarchy. Two top-level subsystems are bihemispheric: One deals with auditory and visual information, and the other corresponds broadly to the default mode network. The other two top-level subsystems are bilaterally symmetrical, and each deals broadly with somatic and visceral information. Because the entire endbrain connection matrix was assembled from multiple subconnectomes, it was easy to show that the status of a region as a connectivity hub is not absolute but, instead, depends on the size and coverage of its anatomical neighborhood. It was also shown numerically that creating an ultradense connection matrix by converting all “absent” connections to a “very weak” connection weight has virtually no effect on the clustering hierarchy. The next logical step in this project is to complete the forebrain connectome by adding the thalamus and hypothalamus (together, the interbrain) to the endbrain analysis.