title: Confirmation of functional zones within the human subthalamic nucleus: patterns of connectivity and sub-parcellation using diffusion weighted imaging.
abstract: The subthalamic nucleus (STN) is a small, glutamatergic nucleus situated in the diencephalon. A critical component of normal motor function, it has become a key target for deep brain stimulation in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. Animal studies have demonstrated the existence of three functional sub-zones but these have never been shown conclusively in humans. In this work, a data driven method with diffusion weighted imaging demonstrated that three distinct clusters exist within the human STN based on brain connectivity profiles. The STN was successfully sub-parcellated into these regions, demonstrating good correspondence with that described in the animal literature. The local connectivity of each sub-region supported the hypothesis of bilateral limbic, associative and motor regions occupying the anterior, mid and posterior portions of the nucleus respectively. This study is the first to achieve in-vivo, non-invasive anatomical parcellation of the human STN into three anatomical zones within normal diagnostic scan times, which has important future implications for deep brain stimulation surgery.
authors.affiliation: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, UK. clambert112358@gmail.com
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lambert
authors.forename: Ludvic
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zrinzo
authors.forename: Zoltan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Nagy
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lutti
authors.forename: Marwan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hariz
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Foltynie
authors.forename: Bogdan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Draganski
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ashburner
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frackowiak
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012196:Review Literature as Topic; D020531:Subthalamic Nucleus / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*