Behrens T E J, Johansen-Berg H, Woolrich M W, Smith S M, Wheeler-Kingshott C A M, Boulby P A, Barker G J, Sillery E L, Sheehan K, Ciccarelli O, Thompson A J, Brady J M, Matthews P M
Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK.
Nat Neurosci. 2003 Jul;6(7):750-7. doi: 10.1038/nn1075.
Evidence concerning anatomical connectivities in the human brain is sparse and based largely on limited post-mortem observations. Diffusion tensor imaging has previously been used to define large white-matter tracts in the living human brain, but this technique has had limited success in tracing pathways into gray matter. Here we identified specific connections between human thalamus and cortex using a novel probabilistic tractography algorithm with diffusion imaging data. Classification of thalamic gray matter based on cortical connectivity patterns revealed distinct subregions whose locations correspond to nuclei described previously in histological studies. The connections that we found between thalamus and cortex were similar to those reported for non-human primates and were reproducible between individuals. Our results provide the first quantitative demonstration of reliable inference of anatomical connectivity between human gray matter structures using diffusion data and the first connectivity-based segmentation of gray matter.
关于人类大脑解剖学连接的证据稀少，且很大程度上基于有限的尸检观察。扩散张量成像此前已被用于在活体人类大脑中定义大的白质束，但该技术在追踪进入灰质的通路方面成效有限。在此，我们使用一种新颖的概率性纤维束成像算法及扩散成像数据，确定了人类丘脑与皮质之间的特定连接。基于皮质连接模式对丘脑灰质进行分类，揭示了不同的亚区域，其位置与先前组织学研究中描述的核团相对应。我们发现的丘脑与皮质之间的连接与非人灵长类动物所报道的相似，且在个体之间具有可重复性。我们的结果首次定量证明了利用扩散数据可靠推断人类灰质结构之间解剖学连接的可行性，以及首次基于连接性的灰质分割。
