Vol 161, No 1 (2023)

BACKGROUND: Human posterior associative cortex, including its temporoparietal–occipital subarea, is important in cognitive control, verbal activity, sensory stimuli processing, and attention regulation, visuomotor responses, and situational decision making. Despite data suggesting the prolonged formation of these higher mental functions during postnatal ontogeny, the posterior associative cortex has been insufficiently characterized with respect to microstructural transformations in its individual functionally specialized zones during childhood development.

AIM: This study aimed to examine age-related changes in the cytoarchitecture of functionally differentiated zones of the posterior associative cortex in the temporal and occipital lobes of the cerebral hemispheres from birth to 12 years of age.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study analyzed 73 left cerebral hemispheres of male children from birth to age 12 years who died because of an accident. Computerized morphometry was employed to measure cortical thickness, outer pyramidal plate thickness, and pyramidal neuron profile field area on Nissl-stained paraffin sections of the cortex taken in the temporoparietal–occipital subarea (subareas 37ac, 37a, and 37d) and area 19 of the occipital region. Quantitative data were analyzed at annual intervals.

RESULTS: The thickness of the posterior associative cortex increased on the lateral surface of the temporal and occipital lobes at the ages of 1, 4, and 7 years; on the inferior medial surface of the temporal lobe at the ages of 1 and 6 years; and on its medial surface at the ages of 1 and 7 years. The layer III thickness in subareas 37ac, 37a, and 37d significantly increased synchronously with the increase in cortical cross-sectional area, and in area 19, it continued from the age of 4 to 7 years after the stabilization of the group-average indicators of cortical thickness in this field. All areas examined were characterized by a two-step growth of cortical thickness, which exceeded the growth rate of layer III thickness in relation to the total cortical cross-section. The size of the pyramidal neurons in subareas 37ac and 37d increased in two stages, whereas those in subarea 37a and area 19 increased in three stages of different durations.

CONCLUSIONS: Microstructural changes in the posterior associative cortex in children are heterochronic, heterodynamic, and specialized not only in topographically and functionally distinct cortical areas but also in separate cytoarchitectonic fields, subfields, and level of cytoarchitectonic layers and intracortical microstructural components. The most significant morphofunctional transformations are observed during the first year of life and at the ages of 3–4, 6–7, and 10 years.

BACKGROUND: Available information on the intrauterine maturation of the human brain is fragmentary; thus, the systematization of these data in the form of an information-reference system is needed. A modern solution would be the creation of a multimodal digital atlas, which would combine images of the developing brain at the macromorphological, tissue, and cellular levels.

AIM: This study aimed to create a prototype of an informational reference system on human brain development, incorporating a digital multimodal atlas with the ability to view specific brain regions.

METHODS: The creation of a prototype informational reference system on the prenatal morphogenesis of the human brain involved the following stages: researching the subject area, developing an informational model, defining automation tasks and functionality of the information system, selecting hardware and software tools, testing, and analyzing the results.

RESULTS: A prototype of the informational reference system “Human Brain Development Atlas” was developed, consisting of three main blocks for each ontogenetic stage: (1) description of the brain development stage, which includes a macroscopic description of the brain structure, an overview of key morphogenetic events, and galleries with hematoxylin and eosin-, Nissl-, and Mallory-stained sections; reference atlases, which contains annotated maps of brain sections at different stages of prenatal ontogenesis; and 3) immunohistochemical atlases, which provides data on the developmental translational profile of brain cells. Currently, some materials are already available on the project website: https://brainmorphology.science/ru/

CONCLUSIONS: Modern information technologies can be used for data collection and processing on the prenatal morphogenesis of the human brain. The creation of an informational reference system on the prenatal morphogenesis of the human brain can contribute to the development of new methods for early diagnosis and treatment of various nervous system disorders.

The data presented in this article were previously published in English in “Life” (doi: 10.3390/life13051182) and are published in “Morphology” in Russian with the consent of the authors and copyright holders and in accordance with the terms of the CC BY license of the primary article.

Decidualization is a dynamic, multistep process that results in the differentiation of elongated endometrial stromal cells into round, epithelioid-like decidual cells in response to increasing progesterone levels. Throughout pregnancy, decidual stromal cells play an important role by creating a tolerant microenvironment, the decidua, to suppress the maternal immune response and prevent rejection of the allogeneic fetus. Decidualization is considered significant not only in the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy, prevention of early losses, and modulation of the immune response but also in the control of the onset of labor, regulation of trophoblast invasion, and embryo selection. Decidual cells have immunomodulatory properties in relation to cells of innate and adaptive immunity. Pregnancy maintenance requires selective elimination of proinflammatory senescent decidual cells by activated uterine natural killer cells. Data on various populations of decidualizing endometrial stromal cells revealed subtypes with different functional characteristics, namely, predecidual, decidual, transitional, and senescent subpopulations. An increase in the number of the latter with a proinflammatory phenotype leads to miscarriages. This paper analyzes the literature data on decidualization and its role in the genesis of miscarriage and highlights the contribution of decidual stromal cells to the microenvironment and their direct or indirect influence on the recruitment, distribution, and function of immune cells, extracellular matrix remodeling, and placenta formation.

This paper focuses on the microglandular-like pattern, a rare pattern of endometrial carcinoma whose appearance resembles microglandular hyperplasia of the endocervix. Its similarity with benign lesions makes diagnosis of this pattern of carcinoma difficult, particularly in minute specimens. Moreover, it raises a question of whether the tumor originates from the uterine corpus or the cervix. Microglandular-like adenocarcinoma of the endometrium may be an individual type of carcinoma or combined with endometrioid or mucinous carcinoma. The immunohistochemical evaluation is recommended for precise diagnosis: microglandular-like adenocarcinoma expresses markers typical for cervical carcinomas (p16, СК17, and carcinoembryonic antigen) and endometrial carcinomas (estrogen, vimentin, and CD10). The presence of foamy macrophages in the stroma of the tumor and intraglandular foci of squamous differentiation help in the differential diagnosis of microglandular hyperplasia of the endocervix. Immunohistochemical evaluation also facilitates differential diagnosis: a negative PAX2 expression and a high mitotic index (Ki-67 >10%) indicate a microglandular-like adenocarcinoma.