Published

Neuroscience

Temporo-basal sulcal connections: a manual annotation protocol and an investigation of sexual dimorphism and heritability

Published on - Brain Structure and Function

Authors: Kevin de Matos, Claire Cury, Lydia Chougar, Lachlan T Strike, Thibault Rolland, Maximilien Riche, Lisa Hemforth, Alexandre Martin, Tobias Banaschewski, Arun L W Bokde, Sylvane Desrivières, Herta Flor, Antoine Grigis, Hugh Garavan, Penny Gowland, Andreas Heinz, Rüdiger Brühl, Jean-Luc Martinot, Marie-Laure Paillère Martinot, Eric Artiges, Frauke Nees, Juliane H Fröhner, Herve Lemaitre, Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos, Tomáš Paus, Luise Poustka, Sarah Hohmann, Sabina Millenet, Juliane H Fröhner, Michael N Smolka, Nilakshi Vaidya, Henrik Walter, Robert Whelan, Gunter Schumann, Vincent Frouin, Meritxell Bach Cuadra, Olivier Colliot, Baptiste Couvy-Duchesne

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The temporo-basal region of the human brain is composed of the collateral, the occipitotemporal, and the rhinal sulci. We manually rated (using a novel protocol) the connections between rhinal/collateral (RS-CS), collateral/occipito-temporal (CS-OTS) and rhinal/occipito-temporal (RS-OTS) sulci, using the MRI of nearly 3,400 individuals including around 1000 twins. We reported both the associations between sulcal polymorphisms as well with a wide range of demographics (e.g. age, sex, handedness). Finally, we also estimated the heritability, and the genetic correlation between sulcal connections. We reported the frequency of the sulcal connections in the general population, which were hemisphere dependent. We found a sexual dimorphism of the connections, especially marked in the right hemisphere, with a CS-OTS connection more frequent in females (approximately 35-40% versus 20-25% in males) and an RS-CS connection more common in males (approximately 40-45% versus 25-30% in females). We confirmed associations between sulcal connections and characteristics of incomplete hippocampal inversion (IHI). We estimated the broad sense heritability to be 0.28-0.45 for RS-CS and CS-OTS connections, with hints of dominant contribution for the RS-CS connection. The connections appeared to share some of their genetic causing factors as indicated by strong genetic correlations. Heritability appeared much smaller for the (rarer) RS-OTS connection.