Association fibre pathways of the brain: parallel observations from diffusion spectrum imaging and autoradiography

Understanding the long association pathways that convey cortical connections is a critical step in exploring the anatomic substrates of cognition in health and disease. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is able to demonstrate fibre tracts non-invasively, but present approaches have been hampered by the inability to visualize fibres that have intersecting trajectories (crossing fibres), and by the lack of a detailed map of the origins, course and terminations of the white matter pathways. We therefore used diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI) that has the ability to resolve crossing fibres at the scale of single MRI voxels, and identified the long association tracts in the monkey brain. We then compared the results…

• AH
  American Heart Association
• CD
  Centre d'Imagerie BioMédicale
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: P41RR14075, MH64044, S10RR016811
• AA
  Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital