User:Daniel Mietchen/Notebook/Evolutionary MRI/Brain morphometry across species

Background

This project (funding decision pending) is targeted at testing the potential of brain morphometry for comparative evolutionary analyses, as discussed in

1. Mietchen D and Gaser C. Computational morphometry for detecting changes in brain structure due to development, aging, learning, disease and evolution. Front Neuroinform. 2009;3:25. DOI:10.3389/neuro.11.025.2009 |

Current state

• One proposal for a project on Comparative Primate Brain Morphometry has been rejected by the VolkswagenStiftung, another one (with added emphasis on an Open Science approach) is currently under review at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

• An abstract, Optimizing automated processing streams for brain morphometric comparisons across multiple species, has been submitted to the Human Brain Mapping 2010 conference.

At the conference, there will be a keynote on "Comparative Neuroimaging Across Species" (cf. http://www.humanbrainmapping.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageID=3363 ) by Wim Vanduffel ( http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/martinos/people/showPerson.php?people_id=177 ), focusing on fMRI of the visual system

There will also be a morning workshop "Multi-Subject Surface-Based Analysis of fMRI Data: Challenges, Solutions and Limitations" http://www.humanbrainmapping.org/files/2010%20Symposium_Workshops/Multi-subject%20surface-based%20analysis%20of%20fMRI%20data.pdf

• So far, most of the notes on this project have been taken on a private wiki, but we will see to move a larger fraction here in time for the project to start. Any comments or inquiries are most welcome.

Associated files

• Media:Primate brain comparisons.xls contains two sheets:

• Marino 1998 Primate brain measurements: Mean brain weight, mean body weight, and mean brain weight/body weight ratio for 60 anthropoid primate species (adults, combined sexes), according to Tab. 1 in Marino 1998.

There are also the following supplementary columns:

• Log brain mass;
• EQ_Jerison
• EQ_Stephan

The latter two were calculated according to the formulas given on p. 112 in Holloway 1980

• Jerison’s [1973] EQ, calculated from the equation EQ = brain weight/0.12 * body weight^0.666 ;
• Stephan et al.’s [1969] EQ, calculated from the equation EQ = brain weight/0.0429 * body weight^0.63 ;

• Genetic distance, as taken from Fig. 3 of Xing 2007

Note that there is an erratum for this paper (hidden at the end of this pdf; wasn't aware of it until now, but doesn't seem to affect the data taken from there): "In reference to ‘A Comparison of Encephalization between Odontocete Cetaceans and Anthropoid Primates’, by L. Marino, published in Brain Behav Evol 1998;51:230–238, the journal has been asked to print the corrected figure1. The axes in the original figure were reversed. In tables 1 and 2, the reference to mean brain weight/body weight ratios should be disregarded."

• Subjects: Names or labels of primate subjects (mostly from Rilling and Insel, 1998) for which I have MR data. For each subject, the data concerning its species is transferred from the previous sheet.