Lin Tang1, Yulin Ge1, Daniel
Sodickson1, Kellyanne Mcgorty1, Joseph Reaume1,
Robert Grossman1
1Department of Radiology, The Center
for Biomedical Imaging of
The
thalamus, as the centrally located relay station for transmitting information
throughout the brain, participates in communication with many associative
brain regions and involves global multi-functional pathways. The purpose of
this study was to investigate whether the 7T resting-state functional scans
can give us more information on this low frequency resting state network
(RSN) associated with thalamic function. This study demonstrates for the
first time, the thalamic functional network during resting state obtained
from both 3T and 7T scans in healthy volunteers. Thalamus was implicated to
be primarily involved with motor control based on results from 3T scans.
Meanwhile thalamus was showed to be functionally related to a number of more
brain areas from 7T scans. The 7T scan verified the larger functional network
of thalamus in brain neural activity and demonstrated that the thalamus is
involved in regulating the transmission of information regarding visual,
motor control, perception, some cognitive functioning and so forth.