Regensburg 2019 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 9: Computational biophysics
BP 9.7: Talk
Tuesday, April 2, 2019, 11:30–11:45, H11
The physics of brain folding — •Lucas da Costa Campos1, 2, Svenja Caspers2, 3, 4, and Jens Elgeti2 — 1Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany — 2Institute for Complex Systems (ICS-2), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany — 3Institute for Anatomy I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany — 4JARA-BRAIN, Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance, Jülich, Germany
Humans possess the most folded brain among the primates. In humans, misfolding of the brain is strongly correlated with several maladies. Folding itself, however, is a physical process. One proposed mechanism is that of differential growth. Like a bimetallic strip, the outer gray matter expands more during development than the inner white matter. This leads to residual stress, and consequentially, to buckling.
We explore this hypothesis using an incompressible Neo-Hookean finite element model. Our system consists of two layers with distinct thicknesses, representing gray matter and white matter, where only the gray matter grows.
Brain folding is further complicated by spatial inhomogeneities in the cortex and its growth. We model these by sinusoidal profiles of cortical thickness or growth rate. In both cases, competition between distinct length scales proves crucial for the formation of sulci-like structures. We quantify the resulting patterns by measuring the curvature and thickness along the layers interface in the buckled system and analyze their correlations.