O'Muircheartaigh Jonathan, Keller Simon S, Barker Gareth J, Richardson Mark P
Department of Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
Department of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology, Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Liverpool, Merseyside L69 3BX, UK Department of Radiology, Walton Centre National Health Service Foundation Trust, Liverpool, UK.
Cereb Cortex. 2015 Nov;25(11):4477-89. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhv063. Epub 2015 Apr 21.
There is an increasing awareness of the involvement of thalamic connectivity on higher level cortical functioning in the human brain. This is reflected by the influence of thalamic stimulation on cortical activity and behavior as well as apparently cortical lesion syndromes occurring as a function of small thalamic insults. Here, we attempt to noninvasively test the correspondence of structural and functional connectivity of the human thalamus using diffusion-weighted and resting-state functional MRI. Using a large sample of 102 adults, we apply tensor independent component analysis to diffusion MRI tractography data to blindly parcellate bilateral thalamus according to diffusion tractography-defined structural connectivity. Using resting-state functional MRI collected in the same subjects, we show that the resulting structurally defined thalamic regions map to spatially distinct, and anatomically predictable, whole-brain functional networks in the same subjects. Although there was significant variability in the functional connectivity patterns, the resulting 51 structural and functional patterns could broadly be reduced to a subset of 7 similar core network types. These networks were distinct from typical cortical resting-state networks. Importantly, these networks were distributed across the brain and, in a subset, map extremely well to known thalamocortico-basal-ganglial loops.
人们越来越意识到丘脑连接在人类大脑高级皮层功能中的作用。这体现在丘脑刺激对皮层活动和行为的影响，以及因丘脑微小损伤而出现的明显皮层病变综合征中。在此，我们尝试使用扩散加权和静息态功能磁共振成像，以非侵入性方式测试人类丘脑结构和功能连接的对应关系。我们对102名成年人的大样本进行研究，将张量独立成分分析应用于扩散磁共振成像纤维束成像数据，根据扩散纤维束成像定义的结构连接性对双侧丘脑进行盲法分割。利用在同一受试者中收集的静息态功能磁共振成像，我们发现，由此得到的结构定义的丘脑区域映射到同一受试者空间上不同且解剖学上可预测的全脑功能网络。尽管功能连接模式存在显著差异，但由此得到的51种结构和功能模式大致可归纳为7种相似核心网络类型的一个子集。这些网络不同于典型的皮层静息态网络。重要的是，这些网络分布于全脑，并且在一部分中与已知的丘脑皮质-基底神经节环路映射得非常好。
