Kwon Hyeok Gyu, Jang Sung Ho
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, 317-1, Daemyung dong, Namku, Daegu 705-717, Republic of Korea.
Neurosci Lett. 2014 Aug 22;578:66-70. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2014.06.033. Epub 2014 Jun 23.
A few studies have reported on the neural connectivity of some neural structures of the visual system in the human brain. However, little is known about the neural connectivity of the lateral geniculate body (LGB). In the current study, using diffusion tensor tractography (DTT), we attempted to investigate the neural connectivity of the LGB in normal subjects. A total of 52 healthy subjects were recruited for this study. A seed region of interest was placed on the LGB using the FMRIB Software Library which is a probabilistic tractography method based on a multi-fiber model. Connectivity was defined as the incidence of connection between the LGB and target brain areas at the threshold of 5, 25, and 50 streamlines. In addition, connectivity represented the percentage of connection in all hemispheres of 52 subjects. We found the following characteristics of connectivity of the LGB at the threshold of 5 streamline: (1) high connectivity to the corpus callosum (91.3%) and the contralateral temporal cortex (56.7%) via the corpus callosum, (2) high connectivity to the ipsilateral cerebral cortex: the temporal lobe (100%), primary visual cortex (95.2%), and visual association cortex (77.9%). The LGB appeared to have high connectivity to the corpus callosum and both temporal cortexes as well as the ipsilateral occipital cortex. We believe that the results of this study would be helpful in investigation of the neural network associated with the visual system and brain plasticity of the visual system after brain injury.
一些研究报告了人类大脑视觉系统某些神经结构的神经连接情况。然而，关于外侧膝状体（LGB）的神经连接却知之甚少。在本研究中，我们使用扩散张量纤维束成像（DTT）来探究正常受试者LGB的神经连接。本研究共招募了52名健康受试者。使用FMRIB软件库将感兴趣的种子区域置于LGB上，该软件库是一种基于多纤维模型的概率性纤维束成像方法。连接性定义为在5、25和50条纤维束阈值下LGB与目标脑区之间的连接发生率。此外，连接性代表了52名受试者所有半球中的连接百分比。我们发现在5条纤维束阈值下LGB的连接性具有以下特征：（1）通过胼胝体与胼胝体（91.3%）和对侧颞叶皮质（56.7%）具有高连接性，（2）与同侧大脑皮质具有高连接性：颞叶（100%）、初级视觉皮质（95.2%）和视觉联合皮质（77.9%）。LGB似乎与胼胝体、双侧颞叶皮质以及同侧枕叶皮质具有高连接性。我们认为本研究结果将有助于研究与视觉系统相关的神经网络以及脑损伤后视觉系统的脑可塑性。
