title: Measuring individual morphological relationship of cortical regions.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Although local features of brain morphology have been widely investigated in neuroscience, the inter-regional relations in brain morphology have rarely been investigated, especially not for individual participants.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this paper, we proposed a novel framework for investigating this relation based on an individual's magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. The key idea was to estimate the probability density function (PDF) of local morphological features within a brain region to provide a global description of this region. Then, the inter-regional relations were quantified by calculating the similarity of the PDFs for pairs of regions based on the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For illustration, we applied this approach to a pre-post intervention study to investigate the longitudinal changes in morphological relations after long-term sleep deprivation. The results suggest the potential application of this new method for studies on individual differences in brain structure.
  
  
  METHODS
  The current method can be employed to estimate individual morphological relations between regions, which have been largely ignored by previous studies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our morphological relation metric, as a novel quantitative biomarker, can be used to investigate normal individual variability and even within-individual alterations/abnormalities in brain structure.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Xiang-Zhen
authors.initials: XZ
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Lijie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Pu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Zetian
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Xiaobin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Dang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: zhenzonglei@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Zonglei
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhen
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China; Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Brain morphology; Individual differences; Morphological connection; Morphological distribution; Morphological relation