Appearance of a neural bypass between injured cingulum and brainstem cholinergic nuclei of a patient with traumatic brain injury on follow-up diffusion tensor tractography images

The human brain is known to contain a maximum of eight cholinergic nuclei： the basal forebrain region： the medial septal nucleus （Ch 1）, the vertical nucleus of the diagonal band （Ch 2）, the horizontal limb of the diago- nal band （Ch 3）, and the nucleus basalis of Meynert （Ch 4）; the brainstem： the pedunculopontine nucleus （Ch 5）, the laterodorsal tegmental nucleus （Ch 6）, and the para- bigeminal nucleus （Ch 8）; and the thalamus： the medial habenular nucleus （Ch 7） （Nieuwenhuys et al., 2008; Naidich and Duvernoy, 2009）. The cingulum is the neu- ral tract extending from the orbitofrontal cortex to the medial temporal lobe （Mufson and Pandya, 1984）. The cingulum plays an important role in memory because it is a passage of the medial cholinergic pathway, which pro- vides cholinergic innervations to the cerebral cortex after originating from Ch 1 and Ch 2 as well as Ch 4 （mainly） （Selden et al., 1998; Nieuwenhuys et al., 2008; Hong and lang, 2010）.

Planning for selective amygdalohippocampectomy involving less neuronal fiber damage based on brain connectivity using tractography

Temporal lobe resection is an important treatment option for epilepsy that involves removal of potentially essential brain regions. Selective amygdalohippocampectomy is a widely performed temporal lobe surgery. We suggest starting the incision for selective amygdalohippocampectomy at the inferior temporal gyrus based on diffusion magnetic resonance imaging（MRI） tractography. Diffusion MRI data from 20 normal participants were obtained from Parkinson＇s Progression Markers Initiative（PPMI） database（www.ppmi-info.org）. A tractography algorithm was applied to extract neuronal fiber information for the temporal lobe, hippocampus, and amygdala. Fiber information was analyzed in terms of the number of fibers and betweenness centrality. Distances between starting incisions and surgical target regions were also considered to explore the length of the surgical path. Middle temporal and superior temporal gyrus regions have higher connectivity values than the inferior temporal gyrus and thus are not good candidates for starting the incision. The distances between inferior temporal gyrus and surgical target regions were shorter than those between middle temporal gyrus and target regions. Thus, the inferior temporal gyrus is a good candidate for starting the incision. Starting the incision from the inferior temporal gyrus would spare the important（in terms of betweenness centrality values） middle region and shorten the distance to the target regions of the hippocampus and amygdala.

A Fiber Tractography Study of Social-Emotional Related Fiber Tracts in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The symptoms of autism spectrum disorder（ASD） have been hypothesized to be caused by changes in brain connectivity. From the clinical perspective, the‘‘disconnectivity＇＇ hypothesis has been used to explain characteristic impairments in ‘‘socio-emotional＇＇ function.Therefore, in this study we compared the facial emotional recognition（FER） feature and the integrity of socialemotional-related white-matter tracts between children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD（HFA） and their typically developing（TD） counterparts. The correlation between the two factors was explored to find out if impairment of the white-matter tracts is the neural basis of social-emotional disorders. Compared with the TD group,FER was significantly impaired and the fractional anisotropy value of the right cingulate fasciculus was increased in the HFA group（P ／ 0.01）. In conclusion, the FER function of children and adolescents with HFA was impaired and the microstructure of the cingulate fasciculus had abnormalities.