This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The application of new magnetic resonance imaging techniques makes it possible?for the first time?to study the neural bases of human social behaviors, and their evolution, in detail. In this project, we use diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to compare connectivity in human, chimpanzee, and macaque brains. DTI scans were collected from four living chimpanzee subjects. While these scans are informative, they suffer from magnetic susceptibility artifacts which we suspect arise from the large sinus cavities in the chimpanzee head. Hence, the images cannot be fairly compared with images from human subjects. In response to these difficulties, we pursued DTI scanning of cadaver chimpanzee brains, and recently generated a very high quality chimpanzee scan that can be compared with human scans. The goal of this study was to explore the white matter pathway supporting human language, the arcuate fasciculus, in humans and chimpanzees. Humans have a very strong arcuate pathway. However, the chimpanzee pathway is interrupted by a pathway connecting lateral motor cortex with the corpus callosum medially. Thus, it appears that the arcuate pathway is stronger than the competing motor pathway in humans, but weaker in chimpanzees.
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