Frontostriatal Brain Wiring Organization in Male and Female Healthy Subjects Using a Novel Diffusion Imaging Fiber Cluster Analysis

BackgroundWe assessed frontostriatal brain wiring organization using diffusion MRI tractography in 100 healthy subjects (HSs) from the Human Connectome Project; age: 22 to 35; sex: 46 females and 54 males.MethodsUsing a fiber clustering atlas (Zhang et al, 2018) and FreeSurfer parcellation, we identified 17 white matter fiber clusters that connect prefrontal cortex (C) and Striatum (S). To quantify the topographical relationship of these fiber clusters, we measured the mean distances between the endpoints of the fiber clusters within the prefrontal cortex (ie, cortical distance) and the mean distances between the endpoints of the corresponding fiber clusters terminating in the striatum (ie, striatal distance).ResultsWe showed (1) the relationship between cortical distances and corresponding striatal distances of the obtained 136 fiber cluster pairs that connect C and S was non-linear;(2) we generated 17 plots …