Neural activations at the junction of the inferior frontal sulcus and the inferior precentral sulcus: interindividual variability, reliability, and association with sulcal morphology - PubMed (original) (raw)

Neural activations at the junction of the inferior frontal sulcus and the inferior precentral sulcus: interindividual variability, reliability, and association with sulcal morphology

Jan Derrfuss et al. Hum Brain Mapp. 2009 Jan.

Abstract

The sulcal morphology of the human frontal lobe is highly variable. Although the structural images usually acquired in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies provide information about this interindividual variability, this information is only rarely used to relate structure and function. Here, we investigated the spatial relationship between posterior frontolateral activations in a task-switching paradigm and the junction of the inferior frontal sulcus and the inferior precentral sulcus (inferior frontal junction, IFJ) on an individual-subject basis. Results show that, although variable in terms of stereotaxic coordinates, the posterior frontolateral activations observed in task-switching are consistently and reliably located at the IFJ in the brains of individual participants. The IFJ shares such consistent localization with other nonprimary areas as motion-sensitive area V5/MT and the frontal eye field. Building on tension-based models of morphogenesis, this structure-function correspondence might indicate that the cytoarchitectonic area underlying activations of the IFJ develops at early stages of cortical folding.

(c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Left frontolateral views of white‐matter segmentations of six subjects with functional imaging maps overlaid in red. Relevant sulci are highlighted by triangles. Note the consistent activation at the junction of the inferior precentral sulcus and the inferior frontal sulcus.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Schematic views of IFJ activations. IFJ activations are shown in grey; black lines indicate the fundi of the inferior precentral and inferior frontal sulci. Note: Double lines indicate truncations of the inferior frontal sulcus. What is marked as inferior frontal sulcus in Subject 4 would be considered as a part of the inferior precentral sulcus following the scheme of Germann et al. [2005]. The circle at the junction of the inferior precentral sulcus and the inferior frontal sulcus in Subject 5 denotes a clear in‐depth separation of these sulci.

Figure 3

Figure 3

Sagittal and axial slices through the IFJ peak for six individuals. The activation peak is marked by a yellow square, the volume of activation by a red outline. On the right, time‐course analyses for the activation peaks are shown.

Figure 4

Figure 4

Upper panel: IFJ peak activations of all individuals (yellow squares) overlaid onto an individual brain in Talairach space. Anatomical slices were chosen to correspond to the mean peak location (orange square). Lower panel: Overlap of IFJ activation volumes. The color bar denotes the number of z maps overlapping at a given voxel. There was a maximum overlap of 5 z maps.

Figure 5

Figure 5

IFJ activations for the six subjects who participated in multiple studies. Volumes of IFJ activations are indicated by colored outlines and are overlaid onto the individual anatomies. For each subject, on the left a sagittal slice is shown and on the right an axial slice. The sulcus abbreviations are explained in Figure 3.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Aguirre GK,Zarahn E,D'Esposito M( 1997): Empirical analyses of BOLD fMRI statistics. II. Spatially smoothed data collected under null‐hypothesis and experimental conditions. Neuroimage 5(3): 199–212. - PubMed
    1. Amiez C,Kostopoulos P,Champod AS,Petrides M( 2006): Local morphology predicts functional organization of the dorsal premotor region in the human brain. J Neurosci 26(10): 2724–2731. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Amunts K,von Cramon DY( 2006): The anatomical segregation of the frontal cortex: What does it mean for function? Cortex 42(4): 525–528. - PubMed
    1. Amunts K,Schleicher A,Burgel U,Mohlberg H,Uylings HB,Zilles K( 1999): Broca's region revisited: Cytoarchitecture and intersubject variability. J Comp Neurol 412(2): 319–341. - PubMed
    1. Amunts K,Malikovic A,Mohlberg H,Schormann T,Zilles K( 2000): Brodmann's areas 17 and 18 brought into stereotaxic space‐where and how variable? Neuroimage 11(1): 66–84. - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources