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Surgical Anatomy of the Insula

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Island of Reil (Insula) in the Human Brain

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Abstract

The insula was for a long time considered as one of the most challenging areas of the brain. This is mainly related to its location, deep and medial to the frontoparietal, temporal, and fronto-orbital opercula. Another difficulty is the content of the lateral fossa, located between the insula and the opercula, which contains the trunks, stem, arteries, and cortical branches of the insular (M2) and opercular (M3) segments of the middle cerebral artery (MCA). Finally, the insula is surrounded by several white matter tracts and cortical structures having important functional roles, especially for language in the dominant hemisphere; the insula is indeed located between a dorsal phonological stream, centered by the arcuate fasciculus and lateral to the posterior insula, and a ventral semantic system, medial to the ventral aspect of the insula and centered by the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF). This chapter reviews some of these surgically relevant anatomical relationships.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Daniel Bourry, photographer at the University of Tours, for his help in picture acquisition and post processing.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR 1253, iBrain, Université de Tours, Inserm, Tours, France

    Christophe Destrieux, Igor Lima Maldonado, Louis-Marie Terrier & Ilyess Zemmoura

  2. CHRU de Tours, Service de Neurochirurgie, Tours, France

    Christophe Destrieux, Louis-Marie Terrier & Ilyess Zemmoura

  3. Departamento de Biomorfologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Laboratório de Anatomia e Dissecção, Instituto de Ciências da Saúde, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil

    Igor Lima Maldonado

  4. Serviço de Neurocirurgia, Unidade Neuro-Músculo-Esquelética, C.H.U. Prof. Edgard Santos, Salvador, Brazil

    Igor Lima Maldonado

  5. LE STUDIUM Loire Valley Institute for Advanced Studies, Orléans, France

    Igor Lima Maldonado

Authors
  1. Christophe Destrieux
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  2. Igor Lima Maldonado
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  3. Louis-Marie Terrier
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  4. Ilyess Zemmoura
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christophe Destrieux .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Adnan Menderes University, School of Medicine , Aydın, Turkey

    Mehmet Turgut

  2. Ege University, Department of Anatomy, Izmir, Turkey

    Canan Yurttaş

  3. Seattle Science Foundation, Seattle, Washington, USA

    R. Shane Tubbs

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Destrieux, C., Lima Maldonado, I., Terrier, LM., Zemmoura, I. (2018). Surgical Anatomy of the Insula. In: Turgut, M., Yurttaş , C., Tubbs, R. (eds) Island of Reil (Insula) in the Human Brain. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75468-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75468-0_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75467-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75468-0

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