Coupling diffusion imaging with histological and gene expression analysis to examine the dynamics of cortical areas across the fetal period of human brain development.

ABSTRACT: As a prominent component of the human fetal brain, the structure of the cerebral wall is characterized by its laminar organization which includes the radial glial scaffold during fetal development. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is useful to quantitatively delineate the microstructure of the developing brain and to clearly identify transient fetal layers in the cerebral wall. In our study, the spatio-temporal microstructural changes in the developing human fetal cerebral wall were quantitatively characterized with high-resolution DTI data of postmortem fetal brains from 13 to 21 gestational weeks. Eleven regions of interest for each layer in the entire cerebral wall were included. Distinctive time courses of microstructural changes were revealed for 11 regions of the neocortical plate. A h

SUBMITTER: Huang H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3792738 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature