A connectional hub in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex links areas of emotion and cognitive control

• Main Authors: Wei Tang, Saad Jbabdi, Ziyi Zhu, Michiel Cottaar, Giorgia Grisot, Julia F Lehman, Anastasia Yendiki, Suzanne N Haber
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2019-06-01
• Series: eLife
• Subjects: frontal cortex; circuit integration; human anatomy; dMRI; network; monkey anatomy
• Online Access: https://elifesciences.org/articles/43761

We investigated afferent inputs from all areas in the frontal cortex (FC) to different subregions in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC). Using retrograde tracing in macaque monkeys, we quantified projection strength by counting retrogradely labeled cells in each FC area. The projection from different FC regions varied across injection sites in strength, following different spatial patterns. Importantly, a site at the rostral end of the cingulate sulcus stood out as having strong inputs from many areas in diverse FC regions. Moreover, it was at the integrative conjunction of three projection trends across sites. This site marks a connectional hub inside the rACC that integrates FC inputs across functional modalities. Tractography with monkey diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) located a similar hub region comparable to the tracing result. Applying the same tractography method to human dMRI data, we demonstrated that a similar hub can be located in the human rACC.