3D morphometry of the cerebral structures for the study of Evolution
Description:
Morphometry of cerebral structures is essential to understand the evolution of the cognitive abilities of the Man, to track the differences between species and to contrast with other fossil or current primates.
A first step is to extract an "imprint" of the brain inside the fossil skull that is called "endocast" (see [Holloway et al., 2004]). It was first performed by careful casting but since a fifteen years now, 3D imaging technique has allowed to obtain very precise "virtual endocast", (see for example a review in [Tobias, 2001]). Nevertheless, the delineation of the endocranium in the 3D images remains still a tedious manual task even it is computer-assisted.
Then several features can be studied as (see for example [Bruner, 2003] or [Schoenemann,2006] for more details) brain size; brain shape (in particular, the importance of the different lobes); asymmetry; circumvolution and cerebral patterns; sinus positions...
In a second step, it is useful to analyze the cerebral structures of modern Man or primates. In particular, the latest MRI methods (diffusion, functional) allow to obtain time-sequence of images not only of the anatomical structures but also with the local microstructural characteristics or some activation indicators.
3D methods have to be developed in order to process such a quantity of 3D data. In particular, new segmentation (e.g.s [ITKSnap] or region growing & template-based method in [Neubauer et al., 2004]), registration (e.g. [Avants et al., 2006]), statistical analysis (e.g. [Pennec & Joshi, 2006] [Pennec & Joshi, 2008]) and 3D visualisation (e.g. [Specht et al., 2007]) algorithms have to be improved, adapted and applied to significant fossil samples and brain databases (e.g. [Gilissen, 2001].
Related presentations:
- 3D Computational Anatomy (presentation in pdf), Xavier Pennec, Research Director, ASCLEPIOS Project, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France.
- Comparative anatomy of the parietal cortex in human and chimpanzee (presentation in pdf), Emmanuel Gilissen, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Department of African Zoology, Tervuren, Belgium / Laboratoire d'histologie générale, de neuroanatomie et de neuropathologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Some other references:
- [Avants et al., 2006] B.B. Avants, P.T. Schoenemann, J.C. Gee. "Lagrangian frame diffeomorphic image registration: Morphometric comparison of human and chimpanzee cortex". Medical Image Analysis 10 (2006) 397-412 (text in pdf).
- [Bruner, 2003] E. Bruner. "Fossil traces of the human thought: paleoneurology and the evolution of the genus Homo". Journal of Anthropological Sciences, Vol. 81 (2003), pp. 29-56.
- [Gilissen, 2001] E. Gilissen. "Structural symmetries and asymmetries in human and chimpanzee brains". In "Evolutionary Anatomy of the Primate Cerebral Cortex", D. Falk & K.R. Gibson (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- [Holloway et al., 2004] R.L. Holloway, D.C. Broadfield, M.S. Yuan. "Human Fossil Record: Brain Endocasts - Paleoneurological Evidence". Wiley-Liss (2004).
- [Neubauer et al., 2004] S. Neubauer, P. Gunz, P. Mitteroecker, G.W. Weber. "Three-dimensional digital imaging of the partial Australopithecus africanus endocranium MLD 37/38". Can Assoc Radiol J. 2004 Oct;55(4):271-8 (text in pdf).
- [Pennec & Joshi, 2006] X. Pennec, S. Joshi (eds). "Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mathematical Foundations of Computational Anatomy - Geometrical and Statistical Methods for Modelling Biological Shape Variability", Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 2006 (text in pdf).
- [Pennec & Joshi, 2008] X. Pennec, S. Joshi (eds). "Proceedings of the Workshop on Mathematical Foundations of Computational Anatomy - Geometrical and Statistical Methods for Biological Shape Variability Modeling", Sept. 2008, New York, USA text in pdf).
- [Schoenemann, 2006] P.T. Schoenemann. "Evolution of the Size and Functional Areas of the Human Brain". Annual Review of Anthropology v. 35:379-406 (2006).
- [Specht et al., 2007] M. Specht, R. Lebrun, C.P.E. Zollikofer. "Visualizing shape transformation between chimpanzee and human braincases". The Visual Computer (2007) 23: 743-751 (text in pdf).
- [Tobias, 2001] P.V. Tobias. "Re-Creating Ancient Hominid Virtual Endocasts by CT-Scanning". Clinical Anatomy 14:134-141 (2001) (text in pdf).
Interested research teams
3D image processing techniques: ASCLEPIOS Project, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France
Contact: Xavier Pennec
Application to databases of primate brains: Royal Museum for Central Africa, Department of African Zoology, Tervuren, Belgium / Laboratoire d'histologie générale, de neuroanatomie et de neuropathologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Contact: Emmanuel Gilissen (emmanuel(dot)gilissen(at)africamuseum(dot)be)
