Cross-species standardised cortico-subcortical tractography

  1. Stephania Assimopoulos
  2. Shaun Warrington
  3. Davide Folloni
  4. Katherine Bryant
  5. Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad
  6. Wei Tang
  7. Saad Jbabdi
  8. Sarah R Heilbronner
  9. Rogier B Mars
  10. Stamatios N Sotiropoulos  Is a corresponding author
  1. Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
  2. Nash Family Department of Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
  3. Lipschultz Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
  4. Institute for Language, Cognition, and the Brain, CNRS, Université Aix-Marseille, France
  5. Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et Neurosciences, UMR 7077, CNRS/Université Aix-Marseille, France
  6. NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre, Queen’s Medical Centre, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
  7. Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington, United States
  8. Oxford Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
  9. Baylor College of Medicine, United States
  10. Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
21 figures, 3 tables and 1 additional file

Figures

Tractography reconstructions of subcortical bundles in the macaque and human brain using correspondingly defined protocols.

Maximum intensity projections (MIPs) in sagittal, coronal, and axial views of group-averaged probabilistic path distributions, for all proposed tractography protocols in the macaque (6 animal average) and human (average of 50 subjects from the Human Connectome Project). All MIPs are within a window of 20% of the field of view centred at the displayed slices. (A) Frontal, temporal, and parietal parts of the extreme capsule (EmCf,EmCt,EmCP); frontal, temporal, and parietal parts of the striatal bundle (StBf,StBt,StBp); and the Muratoff bundle (MB). (B) Amygdalofugal tract (AMF); anterior commissure (AC); uncinate fasciculus (UF); sensorimotor part of the striatal bundle (StBm). Path distributions were thresholded at 0.1% before averaging.

Tractography mirrors tracer patterns in the macaque brain, with similar patterns in the human.

The proposed protocols were first developed in the macaque guided by tracer literature, and then transferred over to the human. Relative positioning of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI)-reconstructed tracts was subsequently explored against the ones suggested by tracers, with good agreement in both species. (A) The dorsal–medial/ventral–lateral separation between the extreme an external capsule (here the frontal parts (EmCf) and StBf shown) is present in macaque tractography, as suggested in the tracer literature. The Muratoff bundle runs along the head of the caudate nucleus. These relative positions are also preserved in the human tractography results. Tracer image modified from Petrides and Pandya, 2006 with permission (under a CC BY 4.0 licence). (B) Similarly for the amygdalofugal (AMF) bundle, which runs under the anterior commissure (AC) and over the uncinate fasciculus (UF), we see agreement with tracer studies with respect to its location in both the macaque and human tractography (Oler et al., 2017; Folloni et al., 2019; Oler and Fudge, 2019). Tracer image adapted from Oler et al., 2017 with permission (under a CC BY 4.0 licence). In all examples group-average tractography results are shown.

Tractography-derived connectivity patterns in the putamen resemble (for both macaque and human) termination sites identified by tracers after injections at different cortical areas (frontal, sensorimotor, parietal, and temporal) in the macaque.

Left: Using macaque tracer data from 78 injections in various parts of the cortex, tracer termination sites in the putamen suggested a pattern based on the distinct cortical origin of the tracer injection sites; moving from the dorsolateral to the ventromedial putamen. Right: The path distributions of the different parts of the striatal bundle (StBf,StBm,StBp,StBt) within the putamen reveal a similar pattern of connectivity to different parts of the cortex, both for macaque (top) and the human (bottom). Coronal and axial views of group-average results are shown for tractography. Cortical areas (Front: frontal cortex, Par: parietal cortex, Temp: temporal cortex, SensMot: Sensorimotor cortex) were obtained from the CHARM1 parcellation (Jung et al., 2021) in the macaque brain (for both tracers and tractography) and from the Harvard parcellation in the human (Frazier et al., 2005; Desikan et al., 2006; Makris and Pandya, 2009).

Generalisability of proposed tractography reconstructions across data quality and individuals.

Results for the new subcortical tracts (right column) are shown against reference corresponding results for the original set of XTRACT tracts (left column), which have been widely used (Warrington et al., 2020). (A) Tract similarity within and between two in vivo human cohorts, spanning a wide range of diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) data quality (HCP: high resolution, long scan time, bespoke setup, UK Biobank (UKB): standard resolution, short scan time, clinical scanner). Violin plots of the average across tracts pairwise Pearson’s correlations, between 1225 unique subject pairs within and across the two cohorts, are shown. Correlations are performed on normalised tract density maps with a threshold of 0.5%. Reported μ is the mean of the correlations across tracts and subject pairs and σ is the standard deviation. (B) Tract similarity in twins, non-twin siblings, and unrelated subjects. Violin plots of the average across tracts pairwise Pearson’s correlations between 72 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs, 72 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, 72 non-twin sibling pairs, and 72 unrelated subject pairs from the Human Connectome Project. Heritable traits are more similar in MZ twins, equally similar in DZ twins and non-twin siblings and more than in unrelated subjects. Asterisk indicates significant pairwise comparisons between groups, as indicated by the brackets.

Identifying homologous deep brain structures (subcortical nuclei and hippocampus) across species solely by connectivity pattern similarity, obtained by the new tractography reconstructions.

Using the corresponding tracts in humans and macaques, connectivity blueprints can be calculated. These are GMxTracts matrices, with each row providing the pattern of how a grey matter (GM) location is connected to the predefined set of Tracts (Mars et al., 2018b). Left: Starting from the average connectivity blueprints (across the 50 human subjects) of reference human regions of interest (ROIs) (Caud: caudate, Put: putamen, Thal: thalamus, Hipp: hippocampus, Amyg: amygdala), Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence (or inverse similarity) maps can be computed against the connectivity blueprints of deeper subcortical regions in the macaque (average shown in the middle). The highest connection pattern similarity corresponds to the homologue macaque region of the corresponding human one. Right: Boxplots of KL divergence values between the reference human regions (across the 50 subjects) and the five macaque ones (across the six macaques). Each box shows the quartiles of the data while the whiskers extend to show the rest of the distribution, except for points that are determined to be “outliers”. Blue dashed line corresponds to median KL divergence values when all white matter tracts are considered (both cortico-cortical and the new subcortical ones). Red dashed line corresponds to median KL divergence when using only cortico-cortical tracts. When cortico-subcortical tracts are included vs not, there is increased specificity/contrast in the cross-species mapping of these deeper structures. The boxplot with the lowest median divergence is shown in green in each case, indicating the best-matching regions in the macaque to the human reference (i.e. caudate human reference best matches macaque caudate, putamen human reference best matches macaque putamen, etc).

Identifying homologous cortical regions across species solely by connectivity pattern similarity, obtained with and without the new tractography reconstructions.

Two pairs of neighbouring frontal regions were chosen (dmPFC: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and vmPFC: ventromedial prefrontal cortex, OFCr: rostral orbitofrontal cortex and FOP: frontal operculum) and their mapping from human to macaque (A) and from macaque to human (B) was explored. For comparison, we overlay in cyan the corresponding homologue regions in each species, as defined in Folloni et al., 2019. (A) Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence maps in the macaque for a given human cortical reference region (one region per row), representing the similarity in connectivity patterns across the macaque cortex to the average pattern of the human reference region. KL divergence maps are calculated using cortico-cortical (first column), cortico-subcortical (second column), and all tracts (third column) to highlight the effect of the cortico-subcortical tractography reconstructions in the prediction. Subcortical tracts provide larger benefits for the prediction of vmPFC and OFCr, increasing specificity with respect to the expected borders. (B) Same as in A, but using macaque regions as reference and making predictions on the human cortex. KL divergence maps in the human for a given macaque cortical region, representing the similarity of connectivity pattern across the human cortex to the average pattern of the reference macaque region. Overall, in both species, an increased similarity to the reference regions in the homologue areas and decreased similarity across the rest of the cortex is observed, when cortico-subcortical tracts are considered (second or third column). Using the average human (across 50 subjects) and average macaque (across 6 animals) blueprints for this analysis.

Connectivity patterns for neighbouring frontal region pairs, showing distinct cortico-subcortical tract contributions in macaque and human.

Considered regions are the same as in Figure 6A, that is, FOP: frontal operculum, OFCr: rostral orbitofrontal cortex, dmPFC: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC: ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Reference regions were chosen in the human cortex, shown in orange, and obtained from Folloni et al., 2019. The best matching region across the whole macaque cortex was identified by the minimum Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence in connectivity patterns (thresholded at the 7th percentile in each case) and is shown in blue. Average connectivity patterns for the reference and best-matching regions are depicted using the polar plots. For each region, similarities in the connectivity patterns between the macaque and human can be observed, with the new cortico-subcortical bundles contributing to these patterns. For instance, FOP has a strong connection pattern involving EMCf and uncinate fasciculus (UF) and moderately StBf and AF, while its neighbouring OFCr has a stronger pattern involving StBf and UF, compared to EMCf. These differences are preserved across both species. Using the average human (across 50 subjects) and average macaque (across 6 animals) blueprints for this analysis.

Corresponding tract protocol definitions across species.

Protocol definitions for all new (and revised) tracts in the human and macaque. Protocols were first designed in the macaque brain guided by macaque tracer literature, and then transferred over to the human. Colour-coded regions depict the seed, target, and stop masks. Exclusion masks are not shown for ease of visualisation.

Improved specificity in subcortical connectivity patterns when using directly the tractography path distributions.

Subcortical GMsub×Tracts blueprints were built using: (1) an intermediary whole-brain tractography GM×WM matrix, multiplied by WM×Tracts as done in Mars et al., 2018b for cortical regions, and (2) the intersection of the path distribution of each tract with the subcortical structures of interest. The two approaches are shown on the left and right columns for each of the macaque and human examples and for representative example tracts (rows). The latter approach resulted in improved specificity in both the macaque and human, with the tract of interest connecting more focally to the relevant subcortical nucleus. For instance StB tracts end up more specifically in the putamen, MB in the caudate, AC in the amygdala, and ATR in the thalamus. All examples are shown as axial views, apart from StBm,StBt , MB in the macaque that are shown in coronal views.

Appendix 1—figure 1
Tract reconstructions using our cortico-subcortical protocols, with good agreement between the macaque and the human.

Maximum intensity projections (MIPs) of the group-averaged path distributions for all developed tractography protocols in the macaque (6 animal average) and human (50 healthy subject average from the Human Connectome Project dataset; HCP). All MIPs are across a window (20% of the field of view) centred at the displayed slices. Thresholded path distributions are displayed with a low threshold of 0.1% (for the 𝐸𝑚𝐶 parts the 90th percentile was used).

Appendix 1—figure 2
Relative positions maintained for all corresponding parts of striatal and extreme capsule bundles, across species.

Maximum intensity projections (MIPs) of the group-averaged tractography results for corresponding parts of the striatal bundle (𝑆𝑡𝐵)/external capsule and the extreme capsule (𝐸𝑚𝐶) in the macaque (6 animal average) and human (50 healthy subject average from the Human Connectome Project dataset; HCP). For each part, 𝑆𝑡𝐵 is more medial and EmC is more lateral with respect to each other. Tracts considered: frontal, temporal, and parietal parts of the anterior limb of the extreme capsule (EmCf , EmCt , EmCp); frontal, temporal, and parietal parts of the striatal bundle (StBf,StBt , StBp) (Table 1 in main text).

Appendix 1—figure 3
Corresponding tract reconstructions using our macaque cortico-subcortical protocols, between the two macaque standard spaces, F99 and NMT.

Maximum intensity projections (MIPs) of the group-averaged path distributions for all developed tractography results for all developed protocols in the macaque (6 animal average) using protocols in the F99 standard space and protocols in the NMT standard space. All MIPs are across a window (20% of the field of view) centred at the displayed slices. Thresholded path distributions are displayed with a low threshold of 0.1% (for the 𝐸𝑚𝐶 parts the 90th percentile was used).

Appendix 1—figure 4
Corresponding tract reconstructions using our cortico-subcortical protocols, between different data resolutions (spatial and angular) and acquisition protocols.

Maximum intensity projections (MIPs) of the group-averaged path distributions for all developed tractography results for all developed protocols in 50 Human Connectome Project (HCP) and 50 UK Biobank (UKB) subjects. All MIPs are across a window (20% of the field of view) centred at the displayed slices. Thresholded path distributions are displayed with a low threshold of 0.1% (for the 𝐸𝑚𝐶 parts the 90th percentile was used).

Appendix 1—figure 5
Corresponding tract reconstructions using our cortico-subcortical protocols, across different cohort sizes.

Maximum intensity projections (MIPs) of the group-averaged path distributions for all developed tractography results for all developed protocols in 10, 50, and 339 (all unrelated subjects) Human Connectome Project (HCP) subjects. All MIPs are across a window (20% of the field of view) centred at the displayed slices. Thresholded path distributions are displayed with a low threshold of 0.1% (for the 𝐸𝑚𝐶 parts the 90th percentile was used).

Appendix 1—figure 6
Individual subject tract reconstructions match the group average, while preserving expected topology for 𝑆𝑡𝐵 and 𝐸𝑚𝐶.

Showing reconstruction and relative topology for frontal and parietal parts (StBf vs EmCf , StBp vs EmCp) for individual subjects. The subjects chosen are those corresponding to the 10th, 50th (median), and 90th percentile of the distribution of tract correlations against the group average for the HCP cohort (N = 50). For each subject, the mean correlation to the average across all New tracts was computed and subjects were ranked based on this mean tract correlation. In all cases, tracts reconstruct similarly to the average atlas, while preserving the expected topology (𝑆𝑡𝐵 more medial than 𝐸𝑚𝐶).

Appendix 1—figure 7
Individual subject tract reconstructions match the group average for 𝑀𝐵, 𝐴𝑀𝐹, and 𝑈𝐹.

The subjects chosen are those corresponding to the 10th, 50th (median), and 90th percentiles of the tract correlations against the group average for the HCP cohort (N = 50). For each subject, the mean correlation to the average across all New tracts was computed and subjects were ranked based on this mean tract correlation. In all cases, tracts reconstruct similarly to the atlas.

Author response image 1
Comparison between 10-subject average for example subcortical tracts using TractSeg and XTRACT.

We chose example bundles shared between our set and TractSeg. Per subject TractSeg produces a binary mask rather than a path distribution per tract. Furthermore, the mask is highly overlapping across subjects. Where direct correspondence was not possible, we found the closest matching tract. Specifically, we used ST_PREF for STBf, and merged ST_PREC with ST_POSTC to match StBm. There was no correspondence for the temporal part of StB.

Author response image 2
Violin plots of the mean pairwise Pearson’s correlations across tracts between 72 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs, 72 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs, 72 non-twin sibling pairs, and 72 unrelated subject pairs from the Human Connectome Project, using Tractseg (left) and XTRACT (right).

About 12 cortico-subcortical tracts were considered, as closely matched as possible between the two approaches. For Tractseg we considered: 'CA', 'FX', 'ST_FO', 'ST_M1S1' (merged ‘ST_PREC’ and ‘ST_POSTC’ to approximate the sensorimotor part of our striatal bundle), 'ST_OCC', 'ST_PAR', 'ST_PREF', 'ST_PREM', 'T_M1S1' (merged ‘T_PREC’ and ‘T_POSTC’ to approximate the sensorimotor part of our striatal bundle), 'T_PREF', 'T_PREM', 'UF'. For XTRACT we considered: 'ac', 'fx', 'StBf', 'StBm', 'StBp', 'StBt, 'EmCf', 'EmCp', 'EmCt', 'MB', 'amf', 'uf'. Showing the mean (μ) and standard deviation (σ) for each group. There were no significant di^erences between groups using TractSeg.

Author response image 3
Subsets chosen from the HCP and UKB reflect similar range of average motion (relative and absolute) to the corresponding full cohorts.

(A) Absolute and relative motion comparison between N=50 and N=339 unrelated HCP subjects. (B) Absolute and relative motion comparison between N=50 and N=7192 super-healthy UKB subjects.

Author response image 4
Average SNR and CNR values show similar range between the N=50 UKB subset and the full UK Biobank cohort of N=7192.
Author response image 5
Connectivity profiles for example cortico-cortical tracts with and without using the intermediary GMxWM matrix.

Tracts considered are the Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus 1 (SLF1), Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus 2 (SLF2), the Frontal Aslant (FA) and the Inferior Fronto-Occipital Fasciculus (IFO). We see that the surface connectivity patterns without using the GMxWM intermediary matrix are more diffuse (effect of “fanning out” gyral bias), with reduced specificity, compared to whenusing the GMxWM matrix

Tables

Table 1
New and revised subcortical protocols.

The developed subcortical tractography protocols for the macaque and human brain. Protocols for anterior commissure, fornix, and uncinate fasciculus were revised from Warrington et al., 2020.

Tract nameAbbreviation
Amygdalofugal tractAMF
Anterior commissureAC
Extreme capsule (frontal)EmCf
Extreme capsule (temporal)EmCt
Extreme capsule (parietal)EmCp
FornixFX
Muratoff bundleMB
Striatal bundle (sensorimotor)StBm
Striatal bundle (frontal)StBf
Striatal bundle (temporal)StBt
Striatal bundle (parietal)StBp
Uncinate fasciculusUF
Key resources table
Resources used in this work.
Reagent type (species) or resourceDesignationSource or referenceIdentifiersAdditional information
Software, algorithmBEDPOSTXJbabdi et al., 2012; Hernández et al., 2013BEDPOSTXFSL package
Software, algorithmXTRACTWarrington et al., 2020XTRACTFSL package
Software, algorithmPROBTRACKXBehrens et al., 2007; Hernandez-Fernandez et al., 2019PROBTRACKXFSL package
Software, algorithmFNIRTAndersson et al., 2007FNIRTFSL package
Software, algorithmRheMapJouandet and Gazzaniga, 1979RheMap
Software, algorithmPython 3.12.11PythonGeneral Analysis (FSL package)
Software, algorithmConnectome Workbench v2.1.0URLWorkbenchGeneral Analysis
Appendix 1—table 1
List of all species-matched (human and macaque) tract protocols, grouped as cortico-cortical, cortico-subcortical, and cerebellar.

Columns indicate whether corresponding protocols are bilateral or not and whether they are New, Revised, or not changed (Original XTRACT).

Cortico-corticalAbbreviationBilateralVersion
Arcuate fasciculusAFYesOriginal
Cingulum subsection: dorsalCBDYesOriginal
Cingulum subsection: peri-genualCBPYesOriginal
Cingulum subsection: temporalCBTYesOriginal
Corticospinal tractCSTYesOriginal
Frontal aslantFAYesOriginal
Forceps majorFMANoOriginal
Forceps minorFMINoOriginal
Inferior longitudinal fasciculusILFYesOriginal
Inferior fronto-occipital fasciculusIFOYesOriginal
Middle longitudinal fasciculusMdLFYesOriginal
Superior longitudinal fasciculus 1SLF1YesOriginal
Superior longitudinal fasciculus 2SLF2YesOriginal
Superior longitudinal fasciculus 3SLF3YesOriginal
Vertical occipital fasciculusVOFYesOriginal
Uncinate fasciculusUFYesRevised
Cortico-subcortical
Acoustic radiationARYesOriginal
Anterior thalamic radiationATRYesOriginal
Optic radiationORYesOriginal
Superior thalamic radiationSTRYesOriginal
FornixFXYesRevised
Anterior commissureACNoRevised
Amygdalofugal tractAMFYesNew
Muratoff bundle/subcallosal fasciculusMBYesNew
Striatal bundle/external capsule (sensorimotor)StBmYesNew
Striatal bundle/external capsule (frontal)StBfYesNew
Striatal bundle/external capsule (temporal)StBtYesNew
Striatal bundle/external capsule (parietal)StBpYesNew
Extreme capsule (frontal)EmCfYesNew
Extreme capsule (temporal)EmCtYesNew
Extreme capsule (parietal)EmCpYesNew
Cerebellar
Middle cerebellar peduncleMCPNoOriginal

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  1. Stephania Assimopoulos
  2. Shaun Warrington
  3. Davide Folloni
  4. Katherine Bryant
  5. Ali-Reza Mohammadi-Nejad
  6. Wei Tang
  7. Saad Jbabdi
  8. Sarah R Heilbronner
  9. Rogier B Mars
  10. Stamatios N Sotiropoulos
(2025)
Cross-species standardised cortico-subcortical tractography
eLife 14:RP107012.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.107012.3