Tracing pathways from high-resolution tractography, transcription, and temporal dimensions

The neural circuits supporting human cognition are topics of enduring interest. The lack of tools available to map circuits has precluded our ability to trace the evolution of the human connectome. We harnessed high-resolution connectomic, anatomic, and transcriptomic data to develop enhanced tools to test for modifications in developmental programs across species. We found corresponding ages across species and transcriptionally define neurons with stereotypical projections in humans and macaques. We used these data to test for modifications in frontal cortex circuit. Frontal cortex circuitry development is extended in primates, which is concomitant with an expansion in cortico-cortical pathways compared with mice in adulthood. These parameters varied little across humans and macaques. We identify a collection of conserved features in frontal cortex circuits in studied primates. We demonstrate that the integration of transcriptional and connectomic data across temporal dimensions is a robust approach to trace the evolution of connections in primates. This dataset contains scripts as well as diffusion MR scans of mouse brains.

Methods
This dataset contains processed diffusion MR scans of mouse brains at postnatal day (P) 60 and P21. These files can be opened with Trackvis (https://trackvis.org/).