Chimpanzee histology and functional brain imaging show that the paracingulate sulcus is not human-specific

Céline Amiez (1) , Jérôme Sallet (2) , Jennifer Novek , Fadila Hadj-Bouziane (3) , Camille Giacometti (1) , Jesper Andersson (4) , William Hopkins , Michael Petrides (5)

1 SBRI - Institut cellule souche et cerveau / Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute
2 WIN - FMRIB - Wellcome Trust Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging
3 CRNL - Centre de recherche en neurosciences de Lyon - Lyon Neuroscience Research Center
4 Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences [Oxford]
5 Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital

Abstract The paracingulate sulcus -PCGS- has been considered for a long time to be specific to the human brain. Its presence/absence has been discussed in relation to interindividual variability of personality traits and cognitive abilities. Recently, a putative PCGS has been observed in chimpanzee brains. To demonstrate that this newly discovered sulcus is the homologue of the PCGS in the human brain, we analyzed cytoarchitectonic and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data in chimpanzee brains which did or did not display a PCGS. The results show that the organization of the mid-cingulate cortex of the chimpanzee brain is comparable to that of the human brain, both cytoarchitectonically and in terms of functional connectivity with the lateral frontal cortex. These results demonstrate that the PCGS is not human-specific but is a shared feature of the primate brain since at least the last common ancestor to humans and great apes ~6 mya.

Domaines: Sciences cognitives

Céline Amiez, Jérôme Sallet, Jennifer Novek, Fadila Hadj-Bouziane, Camille Giacometti, et al.. Chimpanzee histology and functional brain imaging show that the paracingulate sulcus is not human-specific. Communications Biology, 2021, 4 (1), ⟨10.1038/s42003-020-01571-3⟩. ⟨hal-03364138⟩