Emi Takahashi1, 2, Jae W. Song1, Guangping Dai3, Rebecca D. Folkerth4, Jeremy D. Schmahmann5, Patricia Ellen Grant1, 2
1Newborn Medicine, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; 2Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging & Developmental Science Center, Children's Hospital Boston; 3Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital; 4Pathology, Division of Neuropathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School; 5Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital
We applied HARDI tractography to intact postmortem fetal and mature cerebellums to explore the 3-dimensional development of cerebellum pathways. We observed regression of radial organization in the cerebellar cortex and the emergence of regional specificity of cerebellar peduncles that were similar to our previous observations on the development of cerebral cortex. In particular, our results suggest that we may be able to resolve axonal pathways from different types of cells within the cerebellar cortex, which is potentially critical for the future application of this technique to in vivo imaging. Future immunohistochemical correlation studies are planned to test this hypothesis.