Three-dimensional reconstruction of intrinsic tongue muscles of macaques using diffusion-weighted imaging of flash-frozen specimens

Abstract

The tongue plays a major role in speech production. Comparisons of the tongue muscle fiber architecture between humans and nonhuman primates are required to understand the evolutionary acquisition of tongue deformability in human speech. In this study, we performed diffusion-weighted imaging of flash-frozen tongue specimens from macaques, a representative animal model, to visualize the three-dimensional architecture of the intrinsic muscles. The procedures and scanning methods used in this study can also be applied to non-model animals, and are expected to provide quantified data for their tongue architecture to understand the evolutionarily derived features of human tongue deformability.