Advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging of the human brainstem.
The brainstem is of tremendous importance for our daily survival, and yet the functional relationships between various nuclei, their projection targets, and afferent regulatory areas remain poorly characterized. The main reason for this lies in the sub-optimal performance of standard neuroimaging methods in this area. In particular, fMRI signals are much harder to detect in the brainstem region compared to cortical areas. Here we describe and validate a new approach to measure activation of brainstem nuclei in humans using standard fMRI sequences and widely available tools for statistical image processing. By spatially restricting an independent component analysis to an anatomically defined brainstem mask, we excluded those areas from the analysis that were strongly affected by physiological noise. This allowed us to identify for the first time intrinsic connectivity networks in the human brainstem and to map brainstem-cortical connectivity purely based on functionally defined regions of interest.
Pain & Autonomics - Integrative Research (PAIR), Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Jena, Germany; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA. Electronic address: florian.beissner@uni-jena.de.
Florian
F
Beissner
Pain & Autonomics - Integrative Research (PAIR), Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Jena, Germany.
Andy
A
Schumann
Pain & Autonomics - Integrative Research (PAIR), Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Jena, Germany.
Franziska
F
Brunn
Pain & Autonomics - Integrative Research (PAIR), Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Jena, Germany.
Daniela
D
Eisenträger
Pain & Autonomics - Integrative Research (PAIR), Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Jena, Germany.
Karl-Jürgen
KJ
Bär
D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D001933:Brain Stem / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
Brainstem; Brainstem nuclei; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Independent component analysis; Intrinsic connectivity networks; Physiological noise correction; Resting state