Abstract
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is thought to play a key role in cognitive and affective regulation, has been widely reported to have a high degree of morphological inter-individual variability and asymmetry. An obvious difference is in the morphology of the paracingulate sulcus (PCS). Three types of PCS have been identified: prominent, present, and absent. In this study, we examined the relationship between PCS asymmetry and whether the asymmetry of the PCS is affected by sex, handedness, or race. PCS measurements were obtained from four datasets. The statistical results revealed that the PCS was more often prominent and present in the left hemisphere than in the right. The percentage of right-handed males with a prominent PCS was greater than that of right-handed females, but the percentage of left-handed males with a prominent PCS was lower than that of left-handed females. In addition, both male and female and both left-handed and right-handed subjects showed a leftward asymmetry of the PCS. Furthermore there were no significant racial differences in the leftward asymmetry of the PCS. Our findings about the morphological characteristics of the PCS may facilitate future clinical and cognitive studies of this area.
Highlights
The cingulate cortex, which is located bilaterally in the medial frontal lobes, is the most prominent structure of the human brain medial wall
All the datasets showed a leftward lateralization of the paracingulate sulcus (PCS) in both males and females (Table 2). These results show that the presence of leftward asymmetry of the PCS was not affected by racial differences
In both the right- and left-hander datasets, the males and females both had a greater frequency of PCSs and that the PCSs tended to be more pronounced in the left than in the right anterior cingulate region.This finding indicated that handedness does not affect the presence, absence, or prominence of the PCS in the trend toward leftward asymmetry
Summary
The cingulate cortex, which is located bilaterally in the medial frontal lobes, is the most prominent structure of the human brain medial wall. The PCS can be described as “prominent” if it is longer than 40 mm, as “present” if it extends more than 20 mm, and as “absent” if the length is less than 20 mm Following these criteria, Paus and colleagues[6] examined 247 young healthy volunteers’ brain images obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and found a higher incidence of the PCS in the left hemisphere than in the right as well as a significant effect of sex in the distribution of the prominent, present, and absent PCS in males and females. Several previous studies revealed asymmetry in the PCS between the left and right hemispheres, whether the PCS distribution patterns of the prominent, present, and absent PCS is affected by handness and race in males and females is still largely unknown. Three datasets contained right-handed subjects and the fourth dataset comprised left-handed subjects for sex, handness, and race related studies
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