MEBRAINS 1.0: a new population-based macaque atlas

Abstract

Due to their fundamental relevance, the number of anatomical macaque brain templates is constantly growing. Novel templates aim to alleviate limitations of previously published atlases and offer the foundation to integrate multiscale multimodal data. Typical limitations of existing templates include their reliance on one subject, their unimodality (usually only T1 or histological images), or lack of anatomical details. The MEBRAINS template overcomes these limitations by using a combination of T1 and T2 images, from the same 10 animals (Macaca mulatta), which are averaged by the multi-brain toolbox for diffeomorphic registration and segmentation. The resulting volumetric T1 and T2 templates are supplemented with high quality white and gray matter surfaces built with FreeSurfer. Human-curated segmentations of pial surface, white/gray matter interface and major subcortical nuclei were used to analyse the relative quality of the MEBRAINS template. Recently published 3D maps of the macaque inferior parietal lobe and (pre)motor cortex were warped to the MEBRAINS surface template, thus populating it with a parcellation scheme based on cyto- and receptor architectonic analyses. Finally, 9 CT scans of the same monkeys were registered to the T1 modality and co-registered to the template. Through its main features (multi-subject, multi-modal, volume-and-surface, traditional and deep learning-based segmentations), MEBRAINS aims to improve integration of multi-modal multi-scale macaque data and is quantitatively equal or better compared to currently widely used macaque templates. The template is integrated in the EBRAINS and Scalable Brain Atlas web-based infrastructures, each of which comes with its own suite of spatial registration tools.

Different subregions of monkey lateral prefrontal cortex respond to abstract sequences and their components

“…To address the first question, of anatomical specificity and whether sequence representations were unique to subregions of area 46 within the DLPFC, we used new regions of interest (ROI) that tiled area 46 and replicated previous analyses during the SEQ task (Yusif Rodriguez, et al, 2023). First, to tile area 46 we used the MEBRAINS Multilevel Macaque Brain Atlas (Rapan et al 2023;Balan et al 2024)that parcellated area 46 according to cytoarchitectonic divisions augmented by functional connectivity and neurochemical data. This atlas divides area 46 into eight distinct regions (four anterior and four posterior) that are then divided into dorsal and ventral shoulder and fundus regions (Figure 2A,B).…”

Comparative Analysis of Human-Chimpanzee Divergence in Brain Connectivity and its Genetic Correlates

“…Atlases are essential for investigating the structural and functional characteristics of the brain by providing a map in a common space and allowing comparison of results across studies 52 . A series of comparable brain atlases with a uniform parcellation scheme from different species could facilitate efficient comparative studies and provide vital clues about how the human brain evolved 53,54 . However, mapping non-human primate brains is incomplete and relatively preliminary, with previous atlases having been constructed using different modalities and at different scales.…”

Mesoscale columnar-like organization of face and body areas

“…Two rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta; 1 female; 5-9 kg), M1 and M2, were used for the high-resolution fMRI study. They had previously participated in several other studies 9,10,32,33 . Another male rhesus monkey, M3 (6.5 kg), was used for the electrophysiological experiments.…”