engleski

The interrelation of developmental zones’ thicknesses in midfetal human brain: a comparative MRI-histological study

The developing (including fetal) human brain is researched by different MRI techniques or histological methods, or, more recently, often using both approaches concurrently. For these comparative MRI-histological studies, an exploration of the interrelation of the data (qualitative and quantitative) obtained by both methods in the same brains is essential but scarcely performed. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the interrelation of the zones’ thicknesses obtained in T2-weighed MRI scans, and the corresponding data taken from hemtoxylin-eosin stained histological sections for two different telencephalic regions: medial-reputed cingulate gyrus, and lateral- reputed dorsolateral neocortex in the same brains. The study included 10 postmortem human brains aged 17 to 24 gestation weeks. The thickness of the developmental zones was measured using FijiImageJ and NDP.viewer2, and data were statistically analyzed using GraphPad- Prism8. The analysis shows that different developmental zones shrunk diversely during fixation processes, depending on their composition and fetal age. The median (Mdn) thickness decrease of the medial wall was 25.37% (maximum shrinkage 51.6%), while 29.54% (maximum shrinkage 49.4%) in the lateral wall. The prominent subplate zone occupied Mdn 35.1% of the medial wall (laterally Mdn 38.9%) in MRI scans, and Mdn 28.9% (laterally Mdn 33.5%) in histological sections. Thus, the interrelation of data obtained in histological and in postmortem MRI studies varies for different developmental zones and regions of the human fetal brain and should be interpreted thoughtfully, having in mind the effect of postmortem phenomena and tissue processing. Research was funded by the European Regional Development Fund (CoreNeuro-GA- KK-01-1-1-01- 0007), COST-Action-16118 and Croatian Science Foundation.

subplate zone ; tissue shrinkage ; limbic system

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