NTU Undergraduates' research April 2014 - Biosciences | Page 131

Imaging modular structure in prefrontal
cortex
Maria Georgiou, Nottingham Trent University
Abstract:
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a fundamental role in the cognitive functions of the
brain such as attention, memory, language/learning, problem solving, and decision
making. However, the cytoarchitecture of the prefrontal cortex is still not fully
understood as well as the nature of some of those functions. It is still in studies whether
there is a modular structure in prefrontal cortex regions. Modularity has been first
introduced to measure the decomposability of network complexes in a cortical regions of
the brain. The human brain contains many neuronal cell bodies as well as other cell types
which have a fundamental role in many biological processes due to their role in the
information processing through the connected brain networks. Many studies have already
show that brain network communities have a modular structure. This study has been
performed in order to determine whether there is modular structure in prefrontal cortex.
Imaging analysis has been carried out in brain sections of a mouse brain in order to
visualise possible modular organization in prefrontal cortex. Colour images from a
fluorescence microscope have converted to greyscale in order to be analysed with grey
level index (GLI) which can give informations about the particles in the image. The
greyscale images are also converted to RGB space in order to make more noticeable the
presents of possible modular structure. The results from imaging analysis showed a
possible molecular organization in prefrontal cortex. However, further testing methods
should be carried out to make those results more accurate.
Keywords: prefrontal cortex, modular structure, networks organization, imaging
analysis, GLI, RGB space, neuroimaging