scholarly journals Functional connectome of brainstem nuclei involved in autonomic, limbic, pain and sensory processing in living humans from 7 Tesla resting state fMRI

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Cauzzo ◽  
KAVITA SINGH ◽  
Matthew Matthew Stauder ◽  
Maria Guadalupe Garcia-Gomar ◽  
Nicola Vanello ◽  
...  

Despite remarkable advances in mapping the functional connectivity of the cortex, the functional connectivity of subcortical regions is understudied in living humans. This is the case for brainstem nuclei that control vital processes, such as autonomic, limbic, nociceptive and sensory functions. This is because of the lack of precise brainstem nuclei localization, of adequate sensitivity and resolution in the deepest brain regions, as well as of optimized processing for the brainstem. To close the gap between the cortex and the brainstem, on 20 healthy subjects, we computed a correlation based functional connectome of 15 brainstem nuclei involved in autonomic, limbic, nociceptive, and sensory function (superior and inferior colliculi, ventral tegmental area parabrachial pigmented nucleus complex, microcellular tegmental nucleus prabigeminal nucleus complex, lateral and medial parabrachial nuclei, vestibular and superior olivary complex, superior and inferior medullary reticular formation, viscerosensory motor nucleus, raphe magnus, pallidus, and obscurus, and parvicellular reticular nucleus alpha part) with the rest of the brain. Specifically, we exploited 1.1mm isotropic resolution 7 Tesla resting state fMRI, ad hoc coregistration and physiological noise correction strategies, and a recently developed probabilistic template of brainstem nuclei. Further, we used 2.5mm isotropic resolution resting state fMRI data acquired on a 3 Tesla scanner to assess the translatability of our results to conventional datasets. We report highly consistent correlation coefficients across subjects, confirming available literature on autonomic, limbic, nociceptive and sensory pathways, as well as high interconnectivity within the central autonomic network and the vestibular network. Interestingly, our results showed evidence of vestibulo autonomic interactions in line with previous work. Comparison of 7 Tesla and 3 Tesla findings showed high translatability of results to conventional settings for brainstem cortical connectivity and good yet weaker translatability for brainstem brainstem connectivity. The brainstem functional connectome might bring new insight in the understanding of autonomic, limbic, nociceptive and sensory function in health and disease.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
kavita singh ◽  
Simone Cauzzo ◽  
Maria Guadalupe Garcia-Gomar ◽  
Matthew Stauder ◽  
Nicola Vanello ◽  
...  

Brainstem nuclei play a pivotal role in many functions, such as arousal and motor control. Nevertheless, the connectivity of arousal and motor brainstem nuclei is understudied in living humans due to the limited sensitivity and spatial resolution of conventional imaging, and to the lack of atlases of these deep tiny regions of the brain. For a holistic comprehension of sleep, arousal and associated motor processes, we investigated in 20 healthy subjects the resting-state functional connectivity of 18 arousal and motor brainstem nuclei in living humans. To do so, we used high spatial-resolution 7 Tesla resting-state fMRI, as well as a recently developed in-vivo probabilistic atlas of these nuclei in stereotactic space. Further, we verified the translatability of our brainstem connectome approach to conventional (e.g. 3 Tesla) fMRI. Arousal brainstem nuclei displayed high interconnectivity, as well as connectivity to the thalamus, hypothalamus, basal forebrain and frontal cortex, in line with animal studies and as expected for arousal regions. Motor brainstem nuclei showed expected connectivity to the cerebellum, basal ganglia and motor cortex, as well as high interconnectivity. Comparison of 3 Tesla to 7 Tesla connectivity results indicated good translatability of our brainstem connectome approach to conventional fMRI, especially for cortical and subcortical (non-brainstem) targets and to a lesser extent for brainstem targets. The functional connectome of 18 arousal and motor brainstem nuclei with the rest of the brain might provide a better understanding of arousal, sleep and accompanying motor function in living humans in health and disease.


NeuroImage ◽  
2022 ◽  
pp. 118865
Author(s):  
Kavita Singh ◽  
Simone Cauzzo ◽  
María Guadalupe García-Gomar ◽  
Matthew Stauder ◽  
Nicola Vanello ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Horien ◽  
Xilin Shen ◽  
Dustin Scheinost ◽  
R. Todd Constable

AbstractFunctional connectomes computed from fMRI provide a means to characterize individual differences in the patterns of BOLD synchronization across regions of the entire brain. Using four resting-state fMRI datasets with a wide range of ages, we show that individual differences of the functional connectome are stable across three months to three years. Medial frontal and frontoparietal networks appear to be both unique and stable, resulting in high ID rates, as did a combination of these two networks. We conduct analyses demonstrating that these results are not driven by head motion. We also show that the edges demonstrating the most individualized features tend to connect nodes in the frontal and parietal cortices, while edges contributing the least tend to connect cross-hemispheric homologs. Our results demonstrate that the functional connectome is stable across years and is not an idiosyncratic aspect of a specific dataset, but rather reflects stable individual differences in the functional connectivity of the brain.Research highlightsWhole-brain functional connectivity profiles obtained from four resting-state fMRI datasets are unique and stable across 3 months-3 years in adolescents, young adults, and older adultsMedial frontal and frontoparietal networks tended to be both unique and stableIndividual edges in the frontal and parietal cortices tended to be most discriminative of individual subjects


PLoS ONE ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. e84241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Disha Shah ◽  
Elisabeth Jonckers ◽  
Jelle Praet ◽  
Greetje Vanhoutte ◽  
Rafael Delgado y Palacios ◽  
...  

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