Automated Talairach Atlas labels for functional brain mapping

An automated coordinate-based system to retrieve brain labels from the 1988 Talairach Atlas, called the Talairach Daemon (TD), was previously introduc ed [Lancaster et al., 1997]. In the present study, the TD system and its 3- D database of labels for the 1988 Talairach atlas were tested for labeling of functional activation foci. TD system labels were compared with author-d esignated labels of activation coordinates from over 250 published function al brain-mapping studies and with manual atlas-derived labels from an exper t group using a subset of these activation coordinates. Automated labeling by the TD system compared well with authors' labels, with a 70% or greater label match averaged over all locations. Author-label matching improved to greater than 90% within a search range of +/-5 mm for most sites. An adapti ve grey matter (GM) range-search utility was evaluated using individual act ivations from the M1 mouth region (30 subjects, 52 sites). It provided an 8 7% label match to Brodmann area labels (BA 4 & BA 6) within a search range of +/-5 mm. Using the adaptive GM range search, the TD system's overall mat ch with authors' labels (90%) was better than that of the expert group (80% ). When used in concert with authors' deeper knowledge of an experiment, th e TD system provides consistent and comprehensive labels for brain activati on foci. Additional suggested applications of the TD system include interac tive labeling, anatomical grouping of activation foci, lesion-deficit analy sis, and neuroanatomy education. (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.