Evidence for Segregated and Integrative Connectivity Patterns in the Human Basal Ganglia

By Bogdan Draganski, Ferath Kherif, Stefan Klöppel, P. Cook, Daniel C. Alexander, G. Parker, Ralf Deichmann, John Ashburner, Richard S. J. Frackowiak. Journal of Neuroscience, 2008

773 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Detailed knowledge of the anatomy and connectivity pattern of cortico-basal ganglia circuits is essential to an understanding of abnormal cortical function and pathophysiology associated with a wide range of neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases. We aim to study the spatial extent and topography of human basal ganglia connectivity in vivo. Additionally, we explore at an anatomical level the hypothesis of coexistent segregated and integrative cortico-basal ganglia loops. We use probabilistic tractography on magnetic resonance diffusion weighted imaging data to segment basal ganglia and thalamus in 30 healthy subjects based on their cortical and subcortical projections. We introduce a novel method to define voxel-based connectivity profiles that allow representation of projections from a source to more than one target region. Using this method, we localize specific relay nuclei within predefined functional circuits. We find strong correlation between tractography-based basal ganglia parcellation and anatomical data from previously reported invasive tracing studies in nonhuman primates. Additionally, we show in vivo the anatomical basis of segregated loops and the extent of their overlap in prefrontal, premotor, and motor networks. Our findings in healthy humans support the notion that probabilistic diffusion tractography can be used to parcellate subcortical gray matter structures on the basis of their connectivity patterns. The coexistence of clearly segregated and also overlapping connections from cortical sites to basal ganglia subregions is a neuroanatomical correlate of both parallel and integrative networks within them. We believe that this method can be used to examine pathophysiological concepts in a number of basal ganglia-related disorders.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurology, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7a6b3ba58bfd1455397a4487a041a310536c1a58

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Citations in the corpus

Development of Large-Scale Functional Brain Networks in Children (2009, background): “In humans, these circuits are characterized by segregated and overlapping connectivity patterns and a complex pattern of hierarchically organized frontal inputs [66,67].”
Mechanisms of hierarchical reinforcement learning in cortico-striatal circuits 2: evidence from fMRI. (2012, background): “…of striatum (Inase et al. 1999; Lehericy, Ducros, Krainik et al. 2004; Lehericy, Ducros, Van de Moortele et al. 2004; Postuma and Dagher 2006; Draganski et al. 2008) and with the general principle that inputs to striatum are strongest from cortical areas of closest proximity (Kemp and Powell…”
Functional connectivity mapping of the human precuneus by resting state fMRI (2012, background): “…precuneus By interconnecting with cortical areas, subcortical structures play an important role in motor and cognitive control (Barnes et al., 2010; Draganski et al., 2008; Lehericy et al., 2004a, 2004b; Robinson et al., 2009; Schmahmann and Pandya, 1990; Yeterian and Pandya, 1993; Zhang et al.,…”
Confirmation of functional zones within the human subthalamic nucleus: Patterns of connectivity and sub-parcellation using diffusion weighted imaging (2012, result): “These regions have been previously defined as motor regions (Draganski et al., 2008; McFarland and Haber, 2000; Yelnik et al., 2007) and support the hypothesis that the posterior STN belongs to a motor network.”
Anticipatory affect: neural correlates and consequences for choice (2008, neutral): “Thus, the NAcc projects to the MPFC via the thalamus, which then directly projects back to the medial caudate, which then back to more dorsal regions of the prefrontal cortex via the thalamus, and so forth (Haber et al. 2000; Ferris et al. 2004; Lehericy et al. 2004; Draganski et al. 2008).”
The Reward Circuit: Linking Primate Anatomy and Human Imaging (2010, background): “A recent DTI study indicates that integration between these cortical areas in the thalamus is also likely to exist in humans (Draganski et al , 2008).”
Diffusion MRI at 25: Exploring brain tissue structure and function (2012, background): “2011) and basal ganglia (Draganski et al., 2008) substantia nigra (Menke et al.”
Cognitive control over learning: creating, clustering, and generalizing task-set structure. (2013, neutral): “…anatomical data showing that distinct frontal regions project preferentially to their corresponding striatal region (at the same rostrocaudal level) but that there is also substantial convergence between loops (see Calzavara, Mailly, & Haber, 2007; Draganski et al., 2008; Haber, 2003; Nambu, 2011).”
Multiplexed Levels of Cognitive Control through Delta and Theta Neural Oscillations (2024, background): “In contrast, the posterior and dorsolateral anterior putamen receives projections predominantly from the primary motor and supplementary motor cortices (Choi, Yeo, & Buckner, 2012; Draganski et al., 2008).”
A guide for concurrent TMS-fMRI to investigate functional brain networks (2022, result): “While these hypothesized projections are consistently found across studies, other groups found more diffused projections from M1 and lateral PFC (Draganski et al., 2008; Averbeck et al., 2014).”