Abstract
The corpus callosum is the largest white matter pathway connecting homologous structures of the two cerebral hemispheres. Remarkably, children and adults with developmental absence of the corpus callosum (callosal dysgenesis, CD) show typical interhemispheric integration, which is classically impaired in adult split-brain patients, for whom the corpus callosum is surgically severed. Tovar-Moll and colleagues (2014) proposed alternative neural pathways involved in the preservation of interhemispheric transfer. In a sample of six adults with CD, they revealed two homotopic bundles crossing the midline via the anterior and posterior commissures and connecting parietal cortices, and the microstructural properties of these aberrant bundles were associated with functional connectivity of these regions. The aberrant bundles were specific to CD and not visualised in healthy brains. We extended this study in a developmental cohort of 20 children with CD and 29 typically developing controls (TDC). The two anomalous white-matter bundles were visualised using tractography. Associations between structural properties of these bundles and their regional functional connectivity were explored. The proposed atypical bundles were observed in 30% of our CD cohort crossing via the anterior commissure, and in 30% crossing via the posterior commissure (also observed in 6.9% of TDC). However, the structural property measures of these bundles were not associated with parietal functional connectivity, bringing into question their role and implication for interhemispheric functional connectivity in CD. It is possible that very early disruption of embryological callosal development enhances neuroplasticity and facilitates the formation of these proposed alternative neural pathways, but further evidence is needed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e13126 |
| Journal | Developmental Science |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Early online date | 1 Jun 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2021 |
Bibliographical note
© 2021 The Authors. Developmental Science published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.Funding: The Boninchi Foundation from the University of Geneva; The Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program; The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; European Research Council Consolidator Fellowship (#682734 to A.W.); A Melbourne Children’s Clinician Scientist Fellowship (to R.L.); The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Senior Practitioner Fellowship (to V.A.); The CIBM Center for Biomedical
Imaging, a Swiss research centre of excellence founded and supported by Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), University of Lausanne (UNIL), Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), University of Geneva (UNIGE)
and Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) (to M. G. P.)
Keywords
- anterior commissure
- brain plasticity
- callosal dysgenesis
- functional connectivity
- posterior commissure
- tractography