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Functional anatomy of the thalamus as a model of integrated structural and functional connectivity of the human brain in vivo

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 21:09 authored by Chiara Mastropasqua, Marco Bozzali, Barbara Spanò, Giacomo Koch, Mara Cercignani
While methods of measuring non-invasively both, functional and structural brain connectivity are available, the degree of overlap between them is still unknown. In this paper this issue is addressed by investigating the connectivity pattern of a brain structure with many, well characterized structural connections, namely the thalamus. Diffusion-weighted and resting state (RS) functional MRI (fMRI) data were collected in a group of 38 healthy participants. Probabilistic tractography was performed to parcellate the thalamus into regions structurally connected to different cortical areas. The resulting regions were used as seeds for seed-based analysis of RS fMRI data. The tractographic parcellation was thus cross-validated against functional connectivity data by evaluating the overlap between the functional and structural thalamo-cortical connections originating from the parcellated regions. Our data show only a partial overall correspondence between structural and functional connections, in the same group of healthy individuals, thus suggesting that the two approaches provide complementary and not overlapping information. Future studies are warranted to extend the results we obtained in the thalamus to other structures, and to confirm that the mechanisms behind functional connectivity are more complex than just expressing structural connectivity.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Brain Topography

ISSN

0896-0267

Publisher

Kluwer

Issue

4

Volume

28

Page range

548-558

Department affiliated with

  • BSMS Neuroscience Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-11-26

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