Abstract #3388

Characterization of the cerebro-cerebellar loop exploiting advanced tractography and dealing with thalamic synapsis

Fulvia Palesi¹, Nicolò Rolandi², Fernando Calamante^3,4, Egidio D'Angelo^2,5, and Claudia A.M. Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott^2,6,7

¹Neuroradiology Unit, Brain MRI 3T Research Center, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ²Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, ³School of Aerospace Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, ⁴Sydney Imaging, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, ⁵Brain Connectivity Center, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ⁶Queen Square MS Centre, Department of Neuroinflammation, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁷Brain MRI 3T Research Center, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy

Recently, advanced tractography has been used for assessing the feasibility of characterizing cerebro-cerebellar loop, composed of cerebello-thalamo-cortical and cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathways, acknowledging the issue of how tractography deals with polysynaptic connectivity, i.e. at thalamic level. In this work, polysynaptic cerebello-thalamo-cortical and cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathways were reconstructed using a multiplicative hypothesis for thalamic connectivity. Our findings revealed the importance of using such a multiplication factor for streamlines reaching the thalamic synapses to properly reconstruct cerebro-cerebellar connection. Furthermore, findings using polysynaptic tracts support the cerebellar role in cognition showing that cognitive/associative areas are the mainly involved in both the cerebello-thalamo-cortical and cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathways.

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