title: Contralateral cerebello-thalamo-cortical pathways with prominent involvement of associative areas in humans in vivo.
abstract: In addition to motor functions, it has become clear that in humans the cerebellum plays a significant role in cognition too, through connections with associative areas in the cerebral cortex. Classical anatomy indicates that neo-cerebellar regions are connected with the contralateral cerebral cortex through the dentate nucleus, superior cerebellar peduncle, red nucleus and ventrolateral anterior nucleus of the thalamus. The anatomical existence of these connections has been demonstrated using virus retrograde transport techniques in monkeys and rats ex vivo. In this study, using advanced diffusion MRI tractography we show that it is possible to calculate streamlines to reconstruct the pathway connecting the cerebellar cortex with contralateral cerebral cortex in humans in vivo. Corresponding areas of the cerebellar and cerebral cortex encompassed similar proportion (about 80%) of the tract, suggesting that the majority of streamlines passing through the superior cerebellar peduncle connect the cerebellar hemispheres through the ventrolateral thalamus with contralateral associative areas. This result demonstrates that this kind of tractography is a useful tool to map connections between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex and moreover could be used to support specific theories about the abnormal communication along these pathways in cognitive dysfunctions in pathologies ranging from dyslexia to autism.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Pavia, Via Bassi 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy. fulvia.palesi@unipv.it.|Brain Connectivity Center, C. Mondino National Neurological Institute, Via Mondino 2, 27100, Pavia, Italy. fulvia.palesi@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Fulvia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Palesi
authors.affiliation: The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne Brain Centre, 245 Burgundy Street, Heidelberg, VIC, 3084, Australia. d.tournier@brain.org.au.|Department of Medicine, Austin Health and Northern Health, University of Melbourne, Studley Road, Heidelberg, Australia. d.tournier@brain.org.au.
authors.forename: Jacques-Donald
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Tournier
authors.affiliation: The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Melbourne Brain Centre, 245 Burgundy Street, Heidelberg, VIC, 3084, Australia. fercala@brain.org.au.|Department of Medicine, Austin Health and Northern Health, University of Melbourne, Studley Road, Heidelberg, Australia. fercala@brain.org.au.
authors.forename: Fernando
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Calamante
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroinflammation, NMR Research Unit, Queen Square MS Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK. muhlertN@cardiff.ac.uk.|Department of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 2AT, UK. muhlertN@cardiff.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Nils
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Muhlert
authors.affiliation: Brain Connectivity Center, C. Mondino National Neurological Institute, Via Mondino 2, 27100, Pavia, Italy. gloria.castellazzi@unipv.it.|Department of Industrial and Information Engineering, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy. gloria.castellazzi@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Gloria
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Castellazzi
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroinflammation, NMR Research Unit, Queen Square MS Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK. d.chard@ucl.ac.uk.|National Institute for Health Research, University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, 149 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 7DN, UK. d.chard@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Declan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chard
authors.affiliation: Brain Connectivity Center, C. Mondino National Neurological Institute, Via Mondino 2, 27100, Pavia, Italy. egidiougo.dangelo@unipv.it.|Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Via Forlanini 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy. egidiougo.dangelo@unipv.it.
authors.forename: Egidio
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: D'Angelo
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroinflammation, NMR Research Unit, Queen Square MS Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, WC1N 3BG, UK. c.wheeler-kingshott@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Claudia A M
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Wheeler-Kingshott
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D020651:Ventral Thalamic Nuclei / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Cerebellum; Cerebral cortex; Diffusion MRI; MRI tractography