Professor Katrin Amunts | Cytoarchitectonics – Decoding functional specialization, brain parcellation, and variation

Cytoarchitecture is experiencing a renaissance during the past two decades because of the increased power and precision of cytoarchitectonic maps of cortical and subcortical areas to relate brain function to its microstructural substrates. Julich-Brain cytoarchitectonic maps provide a reference modality to also align with other aspects of brain organization such as axonal and chemo-architecture. Feature extraction from cytoarchitecture plays an increasing role to inform modeling and simulation, e.g., informing The Virtual Brain by regional cell numbers and parameters of distributions. Thus, cytoarchitecture is not only indicative of the WHERE of a function or a finding in the brain, but also related to the WHAT, i.e., what is behind a certain region in a map, what are the underlying properties of the tissue to fulfil a certain function in a network. These question about WHAT cannot be answered without going into microscopical details. Interestingly, cytoarchitecture exhibits intra-area and across-area variations, which lead to concepts of brain parcellation that are beyond a simplistic understanding of the cortex as a mosaic of areas or of pure gradients. Cytoarchitectonic maps of Julich-Brain provide an interface between the different levels of organization, to study structure-function relationships.

Poster