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Labra N, Mounier A, Leprince Y, Rivière D, Didier M, Bardinet E, Santin MD, Mangin JF, Filippo A, Albessard‐Ball L, Beaudet A, Broadfield D, Bruner E, Carlson KJ, Cofran Z, Falk D, Gilissen E, Gómez‐Robles A, Neubauer S, Pearson A, Röding C, Zhang Y, Balzeau A. What do brain endocasts tell us? A comparative analysis of the accuracy of sulcal identification by experts and perspectives in palaeoanthropology. J Anat 2024; 244:274-296. [PMID: 37935387 PMCID: PMC10780157 DOI: 10.1111/joa.13966] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/02/2023] [Revised: 10/12/2023] [Accepted: 10/12/2023] [Indexed: 11/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Palaeoneurology is a complex field as the object of study, the brain, does not fossilize. Studies rely therefore on the (brain) endocranial cast (often named endocast), the only available and reliable proxy for brain shape, size and details of surface. However, researchers debate whether or not specific marks found on endocasts correspond reliably to particular sulci and/or gyri of the brain that were imprinted in the braincase. The aim of this study is to measure the accuracy of sulcal identification through an experiment that reproduces the conditions that palaeoneurologists face when working with hominin endocasts. We asked 14 experts to manually identify well-known foldings in a proxy endocast that was obtained from an MRI of an actual in vivo Homo sapiens head. We observe clear differences in the results when comparing the non-corrected labels (the original labels proposed by each expert) with the corrected labels. This result illustrates that trying to reconstruct a sulcus following the very general known shape/position in the literature or from a mean specimen may induce a bias when looking at an endocast and trying to follow the marks observed there. We also observe that the identification of sulci appears to be better in the lower part of the endocast compared to the upper part. The results concerning specific anatomical traits have implications for highly debated topics in palaeoanthropology. Endocranial description of fossil specimens should in the future consider the variation in position and shape of sulci in addition to using models of mean brain shape. Moreover, it is clear from this study that researchers can perceive sulcal imprints with reasonably high accuracy, but their correct identification and labelling remains a challenge, particularly when dealing with extinct species for which we lack direct knowledge of the brain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicole Labra
- Département Homme et EnvironnementUMR 7194, CNRS, PaleoFED Team, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelleParisFrance
| | - Aurélien Mounier
- Département Homme et EnvironnementUMR 7194, CNRS, PaleoFED Team, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelleParisFrance
- Turkana Basin InstituteNairobiKenya
| | - Yann Leprince
- Université Paris‐Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpinGif‐sur‐YvetteFrance
| | - Denis Rivière
- Université Paris‐Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpinGif‐sur‐YvetteFrance
| | - Mélanie Didier
- ICM—Institut du Cerveau, Hôpital Pitié‐Salpêtrière, Centre de NeuroImagerie de Recherche—CENIRParisFrance
| | - Eric Bardinet
- ICM—Institut du Cerveau, Hôpital Pitié‐Salpêtrière, Centre de NeuroImagerie de Recherche—CENIRParisFrance
| | - Mathieu D. Santin
- ICM—Institut du Cerveau, Hôpital Pitié‐Salpêtrière, Centre de NeuroImagerie de Recherche—CENIRParisFrance
| | - Jean François Mangin
- Université Paris‐Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpinGif‐sur‐YvetteFrance
| | - Andréa Filippo
- Département Homme et EnvironnementUMR 7194, CNRS, PaleoFED Team, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelleParisFrance
| | - Lou Albessard‐Ball
- Département Homme et EnvironnementUMR 7194, CNRS, PaleoFED Team, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelleParisFrance
- Department of ArchaeologyPalaeoHub, University of YorkYorkUK
| | - Amélie Beaudet
- Laboratoire de Paléontologie, Évolution, Paléoécosystèmes et Paléoprimatologie (PALEVOPRIM), UMR 7262 CNRSUniversité de PoitiersPoitiersFrance
| | | | - Emiliano Bruner
- Paleobiología, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución HumanaBurgosSpain
| | - Kristian J. Carlson
- Evolutionary Studies InstituteUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Palaeosciences CentreJohannesburgSouth Africa
- Department of Integrative Anatomical Sciences, Keck School of MedicineUniversity of Southern CaliforniaCaliforniaLos AngelesUSA
| | - Zachary Cofran
- Anthropology DepartmentVassar CollegePoughkeepsieNew YorkUSA
| | - Dean Falk
- Department of AnthropologyFlorida State UniversityTallahasseeFloridaUSA
| | - Emmanuel Gilissen
- Department of African ZoologyRoyal Museum for Central AfricaTervurenBelgium
| | | | - Simon Neubauer
- Institute of Anatomy and Cell BiologyJohannes Kepler University LinzLinzAustria
| | - Alannah Pearson
- School of Archaeology and AnthropologyAustralian National UniversityCanberraAustralian Capital TerritoryAustralia
| | - Carolin Röding
- Paleoanthropology, Institute for Archaeological Sciences and Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and PaleoenvironmentEberhard Karls University of TübingenTübingenGermany
| | - Yameng Zhang
- Institute of Cultural HeritageShandong UniversityQingdaoShandongChina
| | - Antoine Balzeau
- Département Homme et EnvironnementUMR 7194, CNRS, PaleoFED Team, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelleParisFrance
- Department of African ZoologyRoyal Museum for Central AfricaTervurenBelgium
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Cofran Z, Hurst S, Beaudet A, Zipfel B. An overlooked Australopithecus brain endocast from Makapansgat, South Africa. J Hum Evol 2023; 178:103346. [PMID: 36958187 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2023.103346] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/16/2022] [Revised: 02/22/2023] [Accepted: 02/23/2023] [Indexed: 03/25/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Zachary Cofran
- Anthropology Department, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA; Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg, South Africa.
| | - Shawn Hurst
- Department of Biology, University of Indianapolis, 1400 East Hanna Avenue, Indianapolis, IN, USA
| | - Amélie Beaudet
- Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, UK; School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg, South Africa; Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, Calle de les Columnes, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Bernhard Zipfel
- Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg, South Africa
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Bardo A, Filippo A, Balzeau A. Lateralized behaviors in living humans: Application in the context of hominin brain evolution. PROGRESS IN BRAIN RESEARCH 2023; 275:143-164. [PMID: 36841567 DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.10.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
The left and right hemispheres of our brains differ subtly in structure, and each is dominant in processing specific cognitive tasks. Our species has a unique system of distributing behavior and cognition between each cerebral hemisphere, with a preponderance of pronounced side biases and lateralized functions. This hemisphere-dependent relationship between cognitive, sensory or motor function and a set of brain structures is called hemispheric specialization. Hemispheric specialization has led to the emergence of model systems to link anatomical asymmetries to brain function and behavior. Scientific research on hemispheric specialization and lateralized functions in living humans focuses on three major domains: (1) hand preferences, (2) language, and (3) visuospatial skills and attention. In this chapter we present an overview of this research with a specific focus on living humans and the applications of this research in the context of hominin brain evolution. Our objective is to put into perspective what we know about brain-behavior relationships in living humans and how we can apply the same methods to investigate this relationship in fossil hominin species, and thus improve our understanding of the emergence and development of complex cognitive abilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ameline Bardo
- UMR 7194, CNRS-MNHN, Département Homme et Environnement, Musée de l'Homme, Paris, France; Skeletal Biology Research Centre, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom.
| | - Andréa Filippo
- UMR 7194, CNRS-MNHN, Département Homme et Environnement, Musée de l'Homme, Paris, France
| | - Antoine Balzeau
- UMR 7194, CNRS-MNHN, Département Homme et Environnement, Musée de l'Homme, Paris, France; Department of African Zoology, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium & Laboratory of Histology and Neuropathology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
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Rivière D, Leprince Y, Labra N, Vindas N, Foubet O, Cagna B, Loh KK, Hopkins W, Balzeau A, Mancip M, Lebenberg J, Cointepas Y, Coulon O, Mangin JF. Browsing Multiple Subjects When the Atlas Adaptation Cannot Be Achieved via a Warping Strategy. Front Neuroinform 2022; 16:803934. [PMID: 35311005 PMCID: PMC8928460 DOI: 10.3389/fninf.2022.803934] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2021] [Accepted: 01/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Brain mapping studies often need to identify brain structures or functional circuits into a set of individual brains. To this end, multiple atlases have been published to represent such structures based on different modalities, subject sets, and techniques. The mainstream approach to exploit these atlases consists in spatially deforming each individual data onto a given atlas using dense deformation fields, which supposes the existence of a continuous mapping between atlases and individuals. However, this continuity is not always verified, and this "iconic" approach has limits. We present in this study an alternative, complementary, "structural" approach, which consists in extracting structures from the individual data, and comparing them without deformation. A "structural atlas" is thus a collection of annotated individual data with a common structure nomenclature. It may be used to characterize structure shape variability across individuals or species, or to train machine learning systems. This study exhibits Anatomist, a powerful structural 3D visualization software dedicated to building, exploring, and editing structural atlases involving a large number of subjects. It has been developed primarily to decipher the cortical folding variability; cortical sulci vary enormously in both size and shape, and some may be missing or have various topologies, which makes iconic approaches inefficient to study them. We, therefore, had to build structural atlases for cortical sulci, and use them to train sulci identification algorithms. Anatomist can display multiple subject data in multiple views, supports all kinds of neuroimaging data, including compound structural object graphs, handles arbitrary coordinate transformation chains between data, and has multiple display features. It is designed as a programming library in both C++ and Python languages, and may be extended or used to build dedicated custom applications. Its generic design makes all the display and structural aspects used to explore the variability of the cortical folding pattern work in other applications, for instance, to browse axonal fiber bundles, deep nuclei, functional activations, or other kinds of cortical parcellations. Multimodal, multi-individual, or inter-species display is supported, and adaptations to large scale screen walls have been developed. These very original features make it a unique viewer for structural atlas browsing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Denis Rivière
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Yann Leprince
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Nicole Labra
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- PaleoFED Team, UMR 7194, CNRS, Département Homme et Environnement, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France
| | - Nabil Vindas
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Ophélie Foubet
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Bastien Cagna
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Kep Kee Loh
- INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS UMR 7289, Marseille, France
| | - William Hopkins
- Department of Comparative Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Bastrop, TX, United States
| | - Antoine Balzeau
- PaleoFED Team, UMR 7194, CNRS, Département Homme et Environnement, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France
- Department of African Zoology, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium
| | - Martial Mancip
- Maison de la Simulation, CNRS, CEA Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Jessica Lebenberg
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Université de Paris, INSERM UMR 1141, NeuroDiderot, Paris, France
| | - Yann Cointepas
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
| | - Olivier Coulon
- INT - Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS UMR 7289, Marseille, France
| | - Jean-François Mangin
- Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS UMR 9027, Baobab, NeuroSpin, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
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