Abstract
The amygdala is central for social and emotional processing and has been implicated in various disorders including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Animal research and some limited research with humans has indicated that widespread alterations in neuronal development or neuronal loss in the basolateral and other amygdala subnuclei may be a contributing factor to variations in social behaviours. Yet, the basolateral amygdala is comprised of three subnuclei, each with a specialized role related to the coordination of emotional regulation. Due to their small size, the nuclei which comprise the basolateral amygdala remain understudied in humans in vivo. In this work, we describe methodology to examine the basolateral amygdala and other subnuclei in human ex vivo medial temporal lobe prosections using ultrahigh-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 9.4 T. Manual segmentations of the amygdala subnuclei on MR images, verified with immunohistochemical data, provide a robust three-dimensional atlas of the human amygdala. The goal is to apply the atlas to in vivo MRI scans to examine basolateral amygdala macrostructural development attributed to social cognitive dysfunction in ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders. Furthermore, the atlas can be used to examine MRI-based correlates of neuronal loss commonly seen in neurodegenerative disorders.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to extend sincerest thanks to the Body Bequeathal Program, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology as well as Haase Education in Anatomy & Research Technologies (HEART) laboratory at Western University, London, Canada. Additionally, the authors would like to extend thanks to Dr. Jonathan Lau for his help in preparing the anatomical samples, Dr. Corey Baron and Adam Rankin for their aid in the equipment and sequence development used for MR imaging, Dr. Julio Martinez-Trujillo, Dr. Wataru Inoue, Sara Pac, Daniel Cao, Michelle Everest, Shawn Lee, and Jackson Blonde for their contributions to the immunohistochemistry protocol. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Alex Li at the Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping for his input on the MRI sequences.
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Seguin, D., Khan, A.R., Duerden, E.G. (2022). Three-Dimensional Atlas of the Human Amygdala Subnuclei Constructed Using Immunohistochemical and Ultrahigh-Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data. In: Jahani-Asl, A. (eds) Neuronal Cell Death. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2515. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2409-8_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2409-8_14
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