This dataset aims to deepen the analysis of cortical gyral and sulcal asymmetry of the entire cerebral cortex of healthy adult individuals by quantifying the gray matter content of the right and left hemispheres in a reference sample from South America. The subjects were sampled from populations scarcely represented in MRI research, which tends to be biased towards groups of European ancestry from Europe and North America. In contrast, the population under study is an admixture of Native American, European, and African components that contributed to a variable extent to their gene pool. Consequently, this study will add to expanding the diversity in brain morphometric data and the construction of more population-representative references.

We recruited 175 healthy adult right-handed volunteers of both sexes from the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires (Autonomous city of Buenos Aires and Florencio Varela city) and Bariloche (Argentinian Patagonia), Argentina. 3D T1 volumetric images were obtained in three high-field (3T) scanners: a) Philips Achieva scanner located at the SAMIC El Cruce Hospital (F. Varela, Buenos Aires); b) Siemens Trio scanner located at the Angel Roffo Institute (Autonomous City of Buenos Aires); c) SIGNA PET / MR 3T scanner located in INTECNUS (Bariloche, Río Negro). The parameters of the images at each sampling site were as follows: a) 3D FFE sequence, TE= 3.3 msec, TR= 2300 msec, TI= 900 msec, flip angle= 9°, FOV= 240x240x180, voxel size= 1x1x1 mm3 and 239 slices; b) MP-RAGE, TE= 2.27 msec, TR= 2000 msec, TI= 900 msec, inverted angle= 80, FOV= 250x250, voxel size= 1x1x1 mm3 and 204 slices; c) 3D SPGR (SAG) sequence with an inversion pulse, TE= 2.9 msec, TR= 7.1 msec, TI= 900 msec, flip angle= 9 °, FOV= 256x256x176, voxel size= 1x1x1 mm3 and 176 slices. All the images were processed in the same workstation (with Ubuntu 18.04), using FreeSurfer's “recon-all” algorithm (v 6.0.0.0) (http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu), widely used in structural brain studies, and which exhibits a high precision, reliability, and validity. Then the cerebral cortex of each hemisphere was parcellated taking a probabilistic atlas as a reference, in this case, the atlas by Destrieux et al. (2010) was used. Then, in each subject’s native space, the volume and surface area of the gray matter of 74 parcels were obtained.