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Abstract #2022

Validation of DTI-Tractography-Based Measures of Primary Motor Area Cortical Connectivity

Yurui Gao1,2, Ann S. Choe1,2, Xia (Lisa) Li2, Iwona Stepniewska3, Adam W. Anderson1,2

1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; 2Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Nashville, TN, United States; 3Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States


DTI tractography offers the potential to examine cortical-cortical connectivity in the human brain noninvasively, but on what scale can it reflect true anatomical connectivity? Using the neuroanatomic tracer BDA and DTI measurements in the squirrel monkey, we reconstruct, on the surface of the gray-white matter interface, 3D distribution density maps of BDA stained fibers, BDA stained cell bodies, DTI tracotography derived fibers and DTI fiber terminals. We compared these maps of connectivity between the primary motor cortex (M1) and five other frontal cortex regions. The variation of agreement across different projection regions indicates that the FACT algorithm may not reveal cortical-cortical connectivity with uniform sensitivity across the whole brain.