A comparative study of the superior longitudinal fasciculus subdivisions between neonates and young adults

作者：Wenjia Liang, Qiaowen Yu, Wenjun Wang, Thijs Dhollander, Emmanuel Suluba, Zhuoran Li, Feifei Xu, Yang Hu, Yuchun Tang, Shuwei Liu · 发表于：Brain Structure and Function · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1007/s00429-022-02565-z · 被引用次数：12 · 研究领域：Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications、Fetal and Pediatric Neurological Disorders、Spinal Dysraphism and Malformations

The superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) is a complex associative tract comprising three distinct subdivisions in the frontoparietal cortex, each of which has its own anatomical connectivity and functional roles. However, many studies on white matter development, hampered by limitations of data quality and tractography methods, treated the SLF as a single entity. The exact anatomical trajectory and developmental status of each sub-bundle of the human SLF in neonates remain poorly understood. Here, we compared the morphological and microstructural characteristics of each branch of the SLF at two ages using diffusion MRI data from 40 healthy neonates and 40 adults. A multi-shell multi-tissue constrained spherical deconvolution (MSMT-CSD) algorithm was used to ensure the successful separation of the three SLF branches (SLF I, SLF II and SLF III). Then, between-group differences in the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) metrics were investigated in all the SLF branches. Meanwhile, Mahalanobis distances based on all the diffusion metrics were computed to quantify the maturation of neonatal SLF branches, considering the adult brain as the reference. The SLF branches, excluding SLF II, had similar fibre morphology and connectivity between the neonatal and adult groups. The Mahalanobis distance values further supported the notion of heterogeneous maturation among SLF branches. The greatest Mahalanobis distance was observed ...