Tracing the development and lifespan change of population-level structural asymmetry in the cerebral cortex
- University of Oslo, Norway
- University of Bordeaux, France
- Research Centre Jülich, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands
Abstract
Cortical asymmetry is a ubiquitous feature of brain organization that is subtly altered in some neurodevelopmental disorders, yet we lack knowledge of how its development proceeds across life in health. Achieving consensus on the precise cortical asymmetries in humans is necessary to uncover the developmental timing of asymmetry and extent to which it arises through genetic and later influences in childhood. Here, we delineate population-level asymmetry in cortical thickness and surface area vertex-wise in 7 datasets and chart asymmetry trajectories longitudinally across life (4-89 years; observations = 3937; 70% longitudinal). We find replicable asymmetry interrelationships, heritability maps, and test asymmetry associations in large-scale data. Cortical asymmetry was robust across datasets. Whereas areal asymmetry is predominantly stable across life, thickness asymmetry grows in childhood and peaks in early adulthood. Areal asymmetry is low-moderately heritable (max h2SNP ~19%) and correlates phenotypically and genetically in specific regions, indicating coordinated development of asymmetries partly through genes. In contrast, thickness asymmetry is globally interrelated across the cortex in a pattern suggesting highly left-lateralized individuals tend towards left-lateralization also in population-level right-asymmetric regions (and vice versa), and exhibits low or absent heritability. We find less areal asymmetry in the most consistently lateralized region in humans associates with subtly lower cognitive ability, and confirm small handedness and sex effects. Results suggest areal asymmetry is developmentally stable and arises early in life through genetic but mainly subject-specific stochastic effects, whereas childhood developmental growth shapes thickness asymmetry and may lead to directional variability of global thickness lateralization in the population.
Data availability
All summary-level maps are available in Supplementary file 2. All code underlying the main analyses is available at https://github.com/jamesmroe/PopAsym and on the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/dv9um/). Derived source data underlying figures is also available on the OSF. All datasets used in this work are openly available, with the exception of LCBC where participants, which include many children, have not consented to share their data publicly online. Other datasets used in this work are available without restrictions and are not subject to application approval (DLBS; https://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/retro/dlbs.html; CC BY-NC; SALD; http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/retro/sald.html; CC BY-NC; IXI; https://brain-development.org/ixi-dataset; CC BY-SA 3.0). Accordingly, we have made the individual-level data for these samples available and our code can be used to reproduce vertex-wise analyses in these samples. Individual-level data for the remaining samples (LCBC; Cam-CAN, HCP; UKB) may be available upon reasonable request, given appropriate ethical, data protection, and data-sharing agreements where applicable. Requests must be submitted and approved via the relevant channel (details are provided in Supplementary File 1).
Article and author information
Author details
Didac Vidal-Pineiro
Michel Thiebaut de Schotten
Kristine B Walhovd
Funding
European Research Council (283634)
- Anders M Fjell
European Research Council (725025)
- Anders M Fjell
European Research Council (313440)
- Kristine B Walhovd
Norwegian Research Council (249931)
- Anders M Fjell
Norwegian Research Council (249931)
- Kristine B Walhovd
Norwegian Research Council (302854)
- Yunpeng Wang
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: All studies were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethical approval was obtained from the relevant authorities, and all participants provided informed consent. Studies conducted at the Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition (LCBC) were approved by the Regional Ethical Committee of South-East Norway (2017/653) and complied with all relevant ethical regulations. Ethical approval for the other datasets was granted by the relevant authorities (Supplementary File 1M).
Copyright
© 2023, Roe et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,336
- views
-
- 179
- downloads
-
- 17
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Tracing the development and lifespan change of population-level structural asymmetry in the cerebral cortex
eLife 12:e84685.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.84685
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
The classical diagnosis of Parkinsonism is based on motor symptoms that are the consequence of nigrostriatal pathway dysfunction and reduced dopaminergic output. However, a decade prior to the emergence of motor issues, patients frequently experience non-motor symptoms, such as a reduced sense of smell (hyposmia). The cellular and molecular bases for these early defects remain enigmatic. To explore this, we developed a new collection of five fruit fly models of familial Parkinsonism and conducted single-cell RNA sequencing on young brains of these models. Interestingly, cholinergic projection neurons are the most vulnerable cells, and genes associated with presynaptic function are the most deregulated. Additional single nucleus sequencing of three specific brain regions of Parkinson’s disease patients confirms these findings. Indeed, the disturbances lead to early synaptic dysfunction, notably affecting cholinergic olfactory projection neurons crucial for olfactory function in flies. Correcting these defects specifically in olfactory cholinergic interneurons in flies or inducing cholinergic signaling in Parkinson mutant human induced dopaminergic neurons in vitro using nicotine, both rescue age-dependent dopaminergic neuron decline. Hence, our research uncovers that one of the earliest indicators of disease in five different models of familial Parkinsonism is synaptic dysfunction in higher-order cholinergic projection neurons and this contributes to the development of hyposmia. Furthermore, the shared pathways of synaptic failure in these cholinergic neurons ultimately contribute to dopaminergic dysfunction later in life.
-
- Neuroscience
Synchronous neuronal activity is organized into neuronal oscillations with various frequency and time domains across different brain areas and brain states. For example, hippocampal theta, gamma, and sharp wave oscillations are critical for memory formation and communication between hippocampal subareas and the cortex. In this study, we investigated the neuronal activity of the dentate gyrus (DG) with optical imaging tools during sleep-wake cycles in mice. We found that the activity of major glutamatergic cell populations in the DG is organized into infraslow oscillations (0.01–0.03 Hz) during NREM sleep. Although the DG is considered a sparsely active network during wakefulness, we found that 50% of granule cells and about 25% of mossy cells exhibit increased activity during NREM sleep, compared to that during wakefulness. Further experiments revealed that the infraslow oscillation in the DG was correlated with rhythmic serotonin release during sleep, which oscillates at the same frequency but in an opposite phase. Genetic manipulation of 5-HT receptors revealed that this neuromodulatory regulation is mediated by Htr1a receptors and the knockdown of these receptors leads to memory impairment. Together, our results provide novel mechanistic insights into how the 5-HT system can influence hippocampal activity patterns during sleep.
