Basavaraju G. Sanganahalli1,2, Peter Herman1,2,
Douglas L. Rothman2,3, Hal Blumenfeld2,4, Fahmeed Hyder2,3
1Diagnostic Radiology, Yale
University, New Haven, CT, United States; 2Quantitative
Neuroscience with Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (QNMR), Yale University, New
Haven, CT, United States; 3Diagnostic Radiology & Biomedical
Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States; 4Neurology,
Neurosurgery, Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States
We used 11.7T fMRI (i.e., BOLD and CBV) and electrophysiology to study thalamocortical activations in anesthetized rats. We detected contralateral cortical but bilateral subcortical activations during forepaw stimulation with fMRI and these localized activations were confirmed by independent neural recordings. There were no significant differences between contralateral and ipsilateral thalamic responses, but the thalamic activations were more pronounced in medial and lateral portions of the laterodorsal thalamic nucleus. These experiments provide early insights into understudied interactions between cortical and subcortical areas and which should provide a mechanistic basis to understand sensory signal processing in the brain.