A Digital Atlas of the Dog Brain

Abstract

There is a long history and a growing interest in the canine as a subject of study in neuroscience research and in translational neurology. In the last few years, anatomical and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of awake and anesthetized dogs have been reported. Such efforts can be enhanced by a population atlas of canine brain anatomy to implement group analyses. Here we present a canine brain atlas derived as the diffeomorphic average of a population of fifteen mesaticephalic dogs. The atlas includes: 1) A brain template derived from in-vivo, T1-weighted imaging at 1 mm isotropic resolution at 3 Tesla (with and without the soft tissues of the head); 2) A co-registered, high-resolution (0.33 mm isotropic) template created from imaging of ex-vivo brains at 7 Tesla; 3) A surface representation of the gray matter/white matter boundary of the high-resolution atlas (including labeling of gyral and sulcal features). The properties of the atlas are considered in relation to historical nomenclature and the evolutionary taxonomy of the Canini tribe. The atlas is available for download (https://cfn.upenn.edu/aguirre/wiki/public:data_plosone_2012_datta).

Dog behavior but not frontal brain reaction changes in repeated positive interactions with a human: A non-invasive pilot study using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)

“…The hemodynamic changes in the cortex can be interpreted as either (i) a short neuronal deactivation of the most frontal part of the brain that was directly accessible by the fNIRS-sensor through the skull of the dogs' forehead (e.g. [22]), or (ii) a systemic effect reflecting hemodynamic changes due to an increase in respiration (CO 2 reactivity), sympathetic activation or change in blood pressure [23]. No panting was observed in the current experiment, thus reducing the validity of these arguments relying on a systemic hemodynamic change.…”

Decoding Human Emotional Faces in the Dog’s Brain

“…3 shows the resulting cluster (25,327 mm 3 for the contrast Happy > Neutral faces, located in the right hemisphere, which included the temporal lobe and extended to the caudate nucleus. Due to the extension of the resulting cluster, we extracted the BOLD signal change from spheres of 5 mm radius centered at three local maxima of this cluster, located in the Sylvian (purple), Proreus (light blue), and Straight Gyri (green) 9 . The difference in BOLD signal change between happy and neutral faces in each sphere is shown to the right in Fig.…”

“…As maintenance of the sphinx position requires muscle tone, loss of which would result in major head movement, the criteria used for motion correction of imaging data further guaranteed that the dogs remained awake. Functional images were spatially normalized to an anatomical image of each dog and to a digital atlas of the dog's brain 9 .…”

“…The resulting statistical parametric maps were corrected for multiple comparisons using random field theory 44 (cluster-forming threshold z > 2.3 and p < 0.05). To localize and label the cerebral structures and report the coordinates, we used the digital atlas of Datta et al 9 . We created a sphere of 5 mm radius around the voxel with the local maxima that resulted from the contrast Happy faces > Neutral faces to extract the BOLD signal change.…”

Evolution of Gyrification in Carnivores

“…The area is bordered ventrally by the rhinal fissure and rostrally by the entry of the olfactory tract. Datta et al [2013]. The digital endocasts were rendered in Blender.…”