Characteristics of the aberrant pyramidal tract in comparison with the pyramidal tract in the human brain

BMC Neuroscience

Research Article

Saeyoon Kim¹  Hyeok Gyu Kwon²  Su Min Son²  Min Cheol Chang²  Sung Ho Jang²  Yong Hyun Kwon³ 

[1] Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu, Republic of Korea;Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu, Republic of Korea;Department of Physical Therapy, Yeungnam College of Science & Technology, Daegu, Republic of Korea;

关键词: Fractional Anisotropy;    Diffusion Tensor Imaging;    Pyramidal Tract;    Mean Diffusivity;    Motor Recovery;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2202-12-108

 received in 2011-08-09, accepted in 2011-11-01,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe aberrant pyramidal tract (APT) refers to the collateral pathway of the pyramidal tract (PT) through the medial lemniscus in the midbrain and pons. Using diffusion tensor tractography (DTT), we investigated the characteristics of the APT in comparison with the PT in the normal human brain.ResultsIn thirty-four (18.3%, right hemisphere: 20, left hemisphere: 14) of the 186 hemispheres, the APTs separated from the PT at the upper midbrain level, descended through the medial lemniscus from the midbrain to the pons, and then rejoined with the PT at the upper medulla. Nine (26.5%) of the 34 APTs were found to originate from the primary somatosensory cortex without a primary motor cortex origin. Values of fractional anisotropy (FA) and tract volume of the APT were lower than those of the PT (P < 0.05); however, no difference in mean diffusivity (MD) value was observed (P > 0.05).ConclusionWe found that the APT has different characteristics, including less directionality, fewer neural fibers, and less origin from the primary motor cortex than the PT.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Kwon et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.